History > 2006 > USA > State Justice (V)

NYT        November 29, 2006

Mr. Phillips feigned surprise

as he entered the Chautauqua County courtroom in Mayville.

Don Heupel/Associated Press

Ex-Fugitive Admits Slaying Trooper and Wounding Two        NYT

30.11.2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/30/nyregion/30bucky.html 

Ex-Fugitive Admits

Slaying Trooper and Wounding Two

November 30, 2006
The New York Times
By DAVID STABA

MAYVILLE, N.Y., Nov. 29 — Ralph Phillips, the police say, spent most of the spring and summer roaming along the New York-Pennsylvania line after escaping from a jail outside Buffalo in April, venturing as far as Ohio to the west and the Canadian border to the north to evade a sweeping manhunt.

On Wednesday, within five hours in courtrooms 150 miles apart, the fugitive, who became nationally known simply by his nickname, Bucky, admitted in guilty pleas to killing one New York state trooper and wounding two others during his flight.

As part of a plea agreement that prosecutors said will keep Mr. Phillips in prison for life, he admitted shooting Troopers Joseph A. Longobardo and Donald Baker Jr. with a high-powered rifle in a wooded area outside his former companion’s home in rural Chautauqua County on Aug. 31. One bullet severed an artery in Trooper Longobardo’s thigh; he died on Sept. 3. Trooper Baker left the hospital last week.

After his capture, Mr. Phillips told the police that he mistook the men, who were wearing camouflaged clothes, for bounty hunters and intended to wound them, prosecutors said. In Chautauqua County, though, he did not qualify his actions. When Justice Richard C. Kloch of State Supreme Court asked a shackled Mr. Phillips if he knew the rifle’s .308-caliber ammunition would most likely cause a fatal wound, he responded: “Indeed I did.”

Earlier in the day, in Chemung County, Mr. Phillips also admitted to shooting Trooper Sean M. Brown with a .38 revolver during a traffic stop outside Elmira on June 10. He walked into the Chemung County Courthouse in Elmira for his morning hearing wearing a black jumpsuit unbuttoned midway down his chest, and greeted members of the news media gathered outside with a smile, saying, “Have a good day.”

Mr. Phillips, 44, appeared by turns uninterested and defiant, pleading “very guilty” to possession of the stolen vehicle he was driving when approached by Trooper Brown. When Justice Peter C. Buckley asked him if any promises had been made for his admissions, Mr. Phillips said, “Oh, no, absolutely not.”

When asked if he knew Trooper Brown was a police officer when he pulled over before the shooting, Mr. Phillips said, “I didn’t see he was a trooper because he was tailgating me — I pulled off because I thought it was a drunk tailgating me.”

“That’s just him,” his sister, Mitty Cornelius, said of her brother’s courtroom demeanor, which seemed at times at odds with the seriousness of the charges. “That’s his sense of humor, and a way to get a little jab in, probably.”

But Trooper Brown’s commander, Maj. Steven White of the state police, said, “He showed absolutely no remorse, like it was comical,” adding, “I really don’t think he cares at all about the pain he’s caused to so many people.”

Other than mugging with mock surprise when he entered the crowded courtroom, Mr. Phillips sounded more contrite during his Chautauqua County appearance. He had changed into a horizontally striped, two-tone gray jumpsuit.

The summer-long search for Mr. Phillips brought roadblocks and shortened tempers to the small towns of Chautauqua County, where he was raised and the search primarily centered.

As Mr. Phillips remained at large and was blamed for a series of automobile thefts and break-ins, most at hunting cabins and seasonal homes, he became something of a folk hero to some, with T-shirts bearing slogans like “Run, Bucky, Run” and “Where’s Bucky?” sold at local stores and on the Internet.

Most sympathy evaporated after the shootings of Troopers Longobardo and Baker. He went on the F.B.I.’s 10 Most Wanted List, and rewards totaling $425,000 were offered for information leading to his capture.

He surrendered in a field just across the state line in Pennsylvania at sundown on Sept. 8.

The Chemung County district attorney, John R. Trice, said Mr. Phillips’s lawyer, Richard W. Rich Jr., approached him with the idea of resolving the entire case. He still faces escape charges, to which he is expected to admit at a Thursday morning hearing in Buffalo, as well as possible federal weapons counts stemming from the theft of 41 guns, including the rifle used to shoot troopers Longobardo and Baker.

The most serious of the charges, aggravated murder, carries a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole. Mrs. Cornelius said he admitted to shooting the troopers so that the charges against his former companion, Kasey Crowe, who is charged with hindering prosecution, and their daughter, Patrina Gloss, who is accused of endangering the welfare of Mr. Phillips’ grandchild, would be dropped.

“He doesn’t want to see his daughter lose her child — he’s not happy with what he has to do, but he’s doing it for them,” said Mrs. Cornelius, who accused Mrs. Crowe and Ms. Gloss of pressuring Mr. Phillips into agreeing to the deal. “I can’t believe they’re letting him hang like this.”

Mrs. Crowe and Ms. Gloss left court without comment.

The Chautauqua County district attorney, David W. Foley, said details of the plea agreement would not be made public until after Mr. Phillips’s sentencing, scheduled for December.

    Ex-Fugitive Admits Slaying Trooper and Wounding Two, NYT, 30.11.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/30/nyregion/30bucky.html

Not Guilty Plea in Captive Girl Case

November 23, 2006
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 8:34 a.m. ET
The New York Times

REDWOOD CITY, Calif. (AP) -- A 16-year-old girl whose parents thought she had run away from home returned with a much different story: She had been repeatedly beaten and raped by a man for four years, one of which she spent captive in his basement. John Paule France Gonzales, 22, pleaded not guilty Tuesday to 142 counts, including lewd and lascivious acts on a child, sodomy and penetration with a foreign object.

Gonzales was arrested Saturday when the girl returned home and told her parents she had been held in his parents' basement and endured repeated assaults, San Mateo County prosecutors said.

Gonzales, a pharmacy technician, began molesting the girl when she was 12, while he was dating her aunt, authorities said. He initially molested her at her home, and after breaking up with the aunt, he abused the girl in cars and hotel rooms before forcing her to live with him, they said.

''He used threats to himself, to her and to her family members to either play upon her sympathies or scare her into having sex with him for years,'' said prosecutor Melissa McKowan.

Gonzales' parents apparently were unaware that the girl was living in their home for 12 months. He would smuggle food into the locked room and dispose of the girl's feces in plastic bags to keep her hidden, prosecutors said.

After the home was foreclosed on last month, Gonzales took the girl back to La Honda to live with her family, McKowan said.

''In the beginning, she felt sorry for him and was trying to prevent him from killing himself,'' she said. ''While there is an element of apparent consent, she was so psychologically abused by this guy. Our allegation is that essentially none of it was consensual. I mean, she was 12, for God's sake.''

Gonzales was being held in lieu of $1 million bail. A preliminary hearing was scheduled Dec. 29 in San Mateo County Superior Court.

McKowan said they planned to file about 40 more counts against him if they receive approval from other jurisdictions to charge Gonzales with sex crimes that allegedly happened elsewhere in Northern California.

Gonzales' attorney, Jefferey Neubarth, said his client was a friend of the girl but he denies having any intimate contact with her.

''He's not an evil kid. He's not a bad kid,'' Neubarth told the San Francisco Chronicle on Wednesday. ''He does have a family that loves him, and he cares for the minor. He didn't do anything to harm her, in his mind anyway.''

------

Information from: San Francisco Chronicle, http://www.sfgate.com/chronicle

    Not Guilty Plea in Captive Girl Case, NYT, 23.11.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Captive-Girl.html

Justice Courts for Small New York Towns to Be Overhauled

November 22, 2006
The New York Times
By WILLIAM GLABERSON

ALBANY, Nov. 21 — New York’s top judicial officials outlined a plan on Tuesday to begin reforming the state’s 300-year-old system of town and village courts, which have been criticized for decades as outmoded, poorly supervised and unfair.

The plan, announced here by the state’s chief judge, Judith S. Kaye, included changes that have been recommended for years by defense lawyers and legal experts. Among them were plans to increase training for the justices, to improve their supervision and to better monitor whether they are protecting basic legal principles like the constitutional right to a lawyer.

The courts — known as justice courts — are also to be required for the first time to keep a word-for-word record of their proceedings, like other courts in the state.

While the officials said that many town and village justices are diligent, Judge Kaye said a sweeping reform program was called for by what she called enduring concerns about the courts. The system has survived a century of calls for radical overhaul by governors and commissions, and an important legal challenge in the 1980s.

As outlined by a series of articles in The New York Times in September, the courts have survived in part because the justices — most of them not even lawyers — have longstanding and deep ties to the upstate political system, and because of the substantial cost of replacing them with more professional courts.

The plan announced on Tuesday is the most specific and ambitious effort in years to address significant parts of the system’s troubled dealings.

Most of the measures, like requiring verbatim records and increasing the justices’ training and monitoring, can be instituted through orders from Judge Kaye, effective immediately.

“These courts must provide the same high standard of justice the public expects and deserves from any court in New York,” Judge Kaye said.

But the judiciary’s plan still stopped short of calling for legislative changes in features of the justice court system that disturb critics most.

Those critics — defense lawyers and prosecutors, elected officials and legal experts — say the current threadbare system effectively leaves the state with two types of justice: a modern and professional one for the cities and a second, rudimentary and sometimes abusive one for suburban and rural areas.

The State Assembly is to begin a broad examination of the justice court system at a hearing next month. That hearing is to tackle several of the most serious concerns, like the fact that three quarters of the town and village justices are not lawyers. It will also focus on the fact that unlike all other courts in the state, these courts are financed not by the state but by towns and villages, limiting state control and often resulting in impoverished courts and justices who are paid $1,200 a year or less.

The justice courts are a sprawling system of more than 1,200 courts that are often the first—and frequently the only—stop in the state legal system for people in the 57 counties outside New York City. Dating from Colonial times, the courts occupy something of a time warp, with often poorly trained justices, sometimes convening in town firehouses or highway department garages — or their own kitchens — and dispensing a form of justice unlike any other in the state.

The courts usually handle landlord-tenant cases, small civil cases, traffic infractions and misdemeanors. Yet these courts have considerable powers to jail people, evict tenants and set bail in cases as serious as murder and rape. They handle two million cases a year and collect $210 million in fees and fines.

A state takeover of the financing of the justice courts or a requirement that the justices must be lawyers would require legislation. Judge Kaye and other court officials pointedly declined to say whether they might call for such changes in the future.

Judge Kaye said the judiciary would ask the Legislature for $10 million in next year’s budget to begin making the changes announced on Tuesday, for expenses like training, recording equipment and improving the courts’ physical facilities.

The judiciary’s plan also outlined steps to toughen the examinations justices must pass before they take the bench, and to provide the courts with computers, fax machines, basic security devices and digital recorders to tape their proceedings.

Top court officials said they would begin a new program to require annual audits of justice courts’ books, and to increase the size of a small staff of lawyers who answer justices’ legal questions, usually by telephone. The officials said they would appoint supervising judges across the state to oversee the justice courts, but it was not clear how much power they are to have.

In September, The Times described many justice court cases in recent years in which defendants were jailed illegally, subjected to racial and sexual bigotry and denied fundamental guarantees, like the right to a lawyer or a trial. The articles also detailed many failed efforts over the last century to change or replace the courts.

The court officials’ announcement, and a 68-page report that accompanied it, showed that court officials have chosen for the moment not to take on what could be the considerable political, financial and organizational problems that would accompany any call to overhaul or do away with the courts.

“Our focus is on what we can do now” under current law to improve the justice courts, Jonathan Lippman, the state’s chief administrative judge, said. Judge Kaye has asked a state commission to study the justice courts and she said she would study its recommendations, expected early next year.

Tuesday’s proposals were greeted by some lawyers and experts on the court system as long overdue. But some said that by failing to face basic issues concerning the courts, the plan seemed to leave much work to do.

“I don’t understand how it is possible for them to assure the citizens they’re going to get justice in these town and village courts,” said Robert L. Spangenberg, a national expert on local court systems who studied the justice courts last year for a commission appointed by Judge Kaye.

Donna Lieberman, the executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, said that while the reforms suggested by Judge Kaye were welcome, “these are Band-Aids on a system that needs serious systemic reform.” She said her group was considering a lawsuit to challenge the justice court system if the state did not quickly make broad reform in the courts.

David O. Fuller Jr., the president of the State Magistrates Association, the justices’ organization, said the court officials’ plan was a positive development. He added that the state’s justices continued to believe the network of justice courts “is really a very good system” that does not require fundamental change.

The court officials’ plan is to increase the classroom training for nonlawyer justices to two weeks from one and, for the first time, to require that lawyers who are elected to town and village courts receive judicial training before they take the bench.

In recommending such improvements, the report did not shy away from making clear the depth of the problems in the justice courts. The report said that some courts do not even have a judge’s bench or a single court clerk. As for the current system of training nonlawyer justices, it said analysis of the results “reveals that this approach too often fails to facilitate real learning.”

Laced through their remarks as well were suggestions that the court officials find the current justice court system frustrating to meaningfully oversee and police. Their report said current law gives state court officials “very little effective structural or operational control” and that this “balkanization of responsibility for the Justice Courts,” is an issue New York policymakers should consider.

It observed that the legal system had grown far more complex in the 40 years since the Legislature last approved using justices who were not lawyers. Ensuring that all justices are minimally proficient in the law, it said, “is among the great challenges in New York governance.”

    Justice Courts for Small New York Towns to Be Overhauled, NYT, 22.11.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/22/nyregion/22court.html

Brooklyn Lawyers Vie for Chance at the Big Time

November 19, 2006
The New York Times
By MICHAEL BRICK

Darryl Littlejohn has no resources, no bank account, no money to finance his defense in Brooklyn Supreme Court, where he is charged with first-degree murder. Still, the lawyers of the unofficial Court Street bar association, a crowd better characterized by redness of knuckle than by whiteness of shoe, have put on an intense competition for his case.

In the months since Mr. Littlejohn was arrested, a half-dozen lawyers have taken turns arguing the primary issue of the case — which has been, so far, themselves. Things have gotten ugly. Brooklyn ugly. Some lawyers have accused others of dirty tricks. One of them keeps threatening to sue the judge.

Among the employers available to a Court Street lawyer, Mr. Littlejohn boasts considerable appeal. With little opportunity to plea-bargain, first-degree-murder defendants tend to go to trial at a rate of $75 an hour for assigned counsel, though one lawyer has offered to work on a sort of legal layaway arrangement, no money down. The case presents some intriguing intellectual challenges, relying primarily on circumstantial evidence and DNA work.

Though accused of a chilling murder, Mr. Littlejohn has achieved something like star status in this age of televised courtroom drama. The crime attached to his name, the death in February of a college student named Imette St. Guillen, has drawn coverage from “Good Morning America” and many, many other television programs.

“Lawyers often see high-publicity cases as an entree into the big leagues,” said Gerald L. Shargel, the practitioner in residence at Brooklyn Law School. “Publicity is all about name recognition.”

Publicity has surrounded Mr. Littlejohn, a bouncer at the bar where Ms. St. Guillen was last seen, since investigators questioned him in March. The police held him on a parole violation, then conducted lineups for separate cases of kidnapping in Queens.

The defense lawyer assigned to the lineups was Kevin P. O’Donnell, a Fordham Law School graduate who joined the bar in 1995 and keeps an office in Kew Gardens. Based on that assignment, Mr. O’Donnell began making television appearances weeks before Mr. Littlejohn was charged with murder in Brooklyn.

On March 9, Mr. O’Donnell appeared in a prime-time segment on CNN, and the host, Anderson Cooper, identified him as “the court-appointed attorney for Darryl Littlejohn,” according to a transcript.

“Appreciate you joining us, Kevin O’Donnell,” Mr. Cooper said.

“My pleasure,” Mr. O’Donnell replied.

For the next two weeks, a Brooklyn grand jury heard evidence. A reporter from People magazine spent her days on a courthouse bench. Geraldo Rivera called the district attorney’s press office.

When Mr. Littlejohn was finally arraigned, the courthouse looked like somebody had put up a sign for free beer. There were satellite crews and Internet producers and newspaper reporters and on-air correspondents with spectacular hair. Afterward, there were news conferences.

Mr. O’Donnell continued to appear in court, but Mr. Littlejohn contacted the judge separately, court records show. From his cell on Rikers Island, where he is held under the alias Jonathan Blaze, Mr. Littlejohn swore in an affidavit that Mr. O’Donnell had failed to explain the issues or to investigate evidence of innocence.

“I have questioned Mr. O’Donnell on his ability to handle both cases on his own,” Mr. Littlejohn wrote, referring to the murder case and separate kidnapping charges in Queens, “and requested that he at least put a motion before the court on my behalf to have additional experienced and competent attorneys assigned to assist in my defense.”

On Sept. 20, Mr. Littlejohn, 42, appeared in court to ask for a new lawyer. Mr. O’Donnell agreed to the arrangement, saying he was overwhelmed with work because his client could not afford paralegals and investigators.

“Being retained,” Mr. O’Donnell said, “I don’t think I’m in a position to offer those resources.”

The judge, Cheryl E. Chambers, told Mr. O’Donnell that something seemed strange. In his statements, Mr. O’Donnell had suggested he was Mr. Littlejohn’s appointed lawyer, meaning he could bill the court. Now it was apparent he had been assigned only to the Queens case.

Judges have the discretion to choose lawyers for indigent defendants, most of whom are represented by city-financed groups. In high-profile trials or cases involving conflicts of interest, judges can authorize private lawyers to bill the court at a standard rate, which has greatly increased in recent years.

An agency called the Assigned Counsel Plan parcels assignments to qualified lawyers, but judges have the final say, said Mai Yee, a spokeswoman for the Office of Court Administration.

In the murder case, Justice Chambers agreed to appoint a lawyer to replace Mr. O’Donnell, who did not return calls seeking comment. The chief administrative judge, Neil Jon Firetog, said in an interview that he had discussed the decision with Justice Chambers.

They selected James L. Koenig, a former homicide prosecutor who had handled a case involving the rape and murder of a Hunter College student, and Wayne C. Bodden, who had recently defended a man accused of killing two police detectives — a defense he waged before a gallery of police officers. On Oct. 4, the lawyers appeared in court to accept the assignment.

“I’m back,” Mr. Bodden said to some reporters who had covered his last big case.

But other lawyers were staking their claims. Jeffrey T. Schwartz, who has an office in Manhattan, said in an interview that employees of the Assigned Counsel Plan had called him a half-dozen times, offering the assignment and then rescinding it. Each time it was offered, he said, he accepted without hesitation.

Meanwhile, Mr. Littlejohn had written to Justice Chambers to request Joyce B. David, a former president of the county criminal bar association whose law practice deals with criminal and entertainment law.

Ms. David is the author of “What You Should Know if You’re Accused of a Crime,” a popular title in jailhouse libraries, with chapter headings including “Why You Need a Lawyer” and “What Takes So Long.”

Justice Chambers rejected Mr. Littlejohn’s request on the grounds that defendants are not allowed to choose their assigned counsel. Mr. Schwartz publicly threatened to sue the judge, saying she had deprived him of an assignment he was due through the Assigned Counsel Plan. Ms. David, for her part, offered to represent Mr. Littlejohn without pay.

At a hearing on Nov. 1, all the candidates appeared in court. Justice Chambers called all of them back behind closed doors, except Mr. Schwartz. After the conference, Justice Chambers dismissed the lawyers she had appointed and allowed Mr. Littlejohn to retain Ms. David, who would work pro bono.

Then Mr. Schwartz asked to speak.

“I was purposely excluded from the conference,” he said. The judge pointed out that he had not filed a formal notice of appearance.

Outside the courtroom, Ms. David said she had been drawn by the case’s scientific aspects. She said she would handle the workload by accepting help from Mr. Schwartz and some interns.

On Tuesday, Ms. David returned to court to ask Justice Chambers to recuse herself. In a motion, she accused the judge of manipulating legal assignments to Mr. Littlejohn’s detriment. At the hearing, she said her motion was not “personal.”

“I hope you will take this in the spirit in which it was intended,” Ms. David said. Disputing the accusations, Justice Chambers agreed to consider the motion.

“I assigned counsel in the normal course,” she said. “I selected attorneys with the integrity and experience to represent Mr. Littlejohn.”

After the hearing, Mr. Schwartz said in an interview that he still planned to file his lawsuit against the judge. He will wait until the criminal case is finished, when he can calculate how much the work would have paid. For now, Mr. Schwartz said, he is happy to work with Ms. David.

“It’s a high-profile case,” he said, “and it’s very interesting.”

    Brooklyn Lawyers Vie for Chance at the Big Time, NYT, 19.11.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/19/nyregion/19trial.html

Jury sentences Texas teen to life for brutal attack on Hispanic youth

Posted 11/18/2006 1:08 AM ET
AP
USA Today

HOUSTON (AP) — A teenager described as a white supremacist was sentenced Friday to life in prison for savagely beating and sodomizing a Hispanic boy at a drug-fueled party.

David Henry Tuck, 18, was convicted Thursday of aggravated sexual assault in the near-fatal attack. Witnesses testified that he hurled racial insults and shouted "white power" while sodomizing the 17-year-old victim with the plastic pole of a patio umbrella.

Prosecutor Mike Trent told the jury that Tuck's history of violence showed he is beyond rehabilitation and would commit more attacks if released.

"He is an evil person, and he is not going to change or get better," Trent said. "We need protection from him. You are the only ones that provide that."

"Even if you give him life in prison, it will be more mercy than he showed to (the victim) that night," Trent said.

After the jury imposed the sentence, Tuck's mother, Sharon, hugged the victim's mother in the courtroom.

"I am so sorry," Sharon Tuck said as they both cried. She also hugged the victim, whom the Associated Press has not identified because he a juvenile sexual assault victim.

The assault took place at a party in the Houston suburbs where several youths had gathered to drink alcohol and take drugs, including marijuana, cocaine and the anti-anxiety medication Xanax.

According to testimony, the attack was triggered by the victim's drunken pass at a 12-year-old girl and his attempt to steal drugs.

Doctors did not initially expect the boy to live. He was hospitalized for more than three months and underwent 20 to 30 operations. He testified Wednesday that he remembered nothing of the assault.

Defense attorney Chuck Hinton appealed to the jury's religious faith, saying that Jesus would show Tuck mercy.

"I know that justice has to be done. I know a terrible thing happened. Justice needs to be done, but with mercy," Hinton said.

He also said Tuck had an abusive, absent father and was raised by a single working mother. His only role model, Hinton said, was his older brother, a skinhead who is in jail.

Prosecutors presented a chain of witnesses Friday to describe more than a half-dozen other attacks in which Tuck assaulted people, including a Hispanic man who was punched and kicked at a convenience store by three skinheads.

Linda Cabbell, a special education teacher who taught Tuck in elementary school, said he was violent when he was as young as 9 or 10, recalling how he punched her in the eye and kicked her in the groin. Tuck was later expelled.

Tuck will be eligible for parole in 30 years. The other teen charged in the beating, Keith Robert Turner, 17, is set to go to trial next month.

The victim's father said Tuck should never be released from prison.

"He deserved what he got. This will be with us for the rest of our lives. There's no healing," said the father. The AP has not identified the parents because doing so could identify the victim.

    Jury sentences Texas teen to life for brutal attack on Hispanic youth, UT, 18.11.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-11-18-party-attack_x.htm

'60 Freeway Slayer' Convicted in Murders

November 18, 2006
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 3:47 a.m. ET
The New York Times

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- A man nicknamed the ''60 Freeway Slayer'' could face the death penalty after being convicted Friday in the 1993 and 1994 strangulations of six women.

A jury deliberated for about three days before finding Ivan Hill, 45, guilty of first-degree murder. He also was found guilty of special circumstance allegations of multiple murders and having a prior murder conviction.

The jury was scheduled to begin the penalty phase Nov. 29.

The case drew its name from the 60 Freeway, also known as the Pomona Freeway. Bodies were found along the route running from Los Angeles County eastward into San Bernardino County.

During the trial, the defense acknowledged Hill killed the women, but disputed the prosecution's claim the slayings were premeditated.

Defense attorney Mitchell Bruckner tried to get Hill convicted of lesser charges of second-degree murder. He told jurors that Hill's drug use contributed to his compulsive acts.

The jury saw photos of the victims and heard a recording of Hill's calls to police, in which he told a 911 dispatcher he ''did it again.''

''Y'all better catch me before I kill again,'' he said in another call.

Hill was charged with the killings in November 2003 after being linked by DNA. At the time, he was in prison for robbery, attempted robbery and assault with a deadly weapon, and was set to be released in three months. He was convicted in August 1989 for a murder in Los Angeles County.

    '60 Freeway Slayer' Convicted in Murders, NYT, 18.11.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Freeway-Slayer.html

Trash Collector Guilty in Cape Cod Slaying

November 17, 2006
The New York Times
By PAM BELLUCK

BOSTON, Nov. 16 — A trash collector was convicted on Thursday in the 2002 rape and murder of Christa Worthington, a fashion writer who was stabbed to death and was found in her bungalow on Cape Cod with her 2-year-old daughter clutching her body.

The trash collector, Christopher McCowen, 34, was found guilty of first-degree murder with extreme atrocity, aggravated rape and aggravated armed burglary. Judge Gary A. Nickerson of Barnstable Superior Court sentenced Mr. McCowen to three concurrent terms of life in prison without parole.

The killing of Ms. Worthington, 46, who had lived in New York and Paris before moving to the quiet beach town of Truro, attracted international news coverage, in part because of the grisly and poignant elements of the crime. The police said Ms. Worthington’s daughter, Ava, may have spent up to 36 hours at the bloody scene before she was found trying to breastfeed from her mother. It took the police more than three years to make an arrest. They initially focused on several of Ms. Worthington’s former boyfriends, including Ava’s father, a married man. Then they took the controversial step of setting up DNA screenings in Truro, and on the first day of the dragnet collected swabs of saliva from about 75 men stopped at the post office, a doughnut shop, even the town dump.

Mr. McCowen, who picked up the garbage at Ms. Worthington’s house each week and who had spent time in prison in Florida from 1993 to 1998 for auto theft and burglary, was an early suspect. He agreed to submit a DNA sample, but did not do so for two years. A year later, the crime lab analyzed the sample and linked it to DNA found on Ms. Worthington’s body. Mr. McCowen was arrested in April 2005 at a rooming house in Hyannis.

Under Massachusetts law, first-degree murder convictions are automatically appealed. Robert George, Mr. McCowen’s lawyer, said that process might take up to 18 months.

“Do you expect me to say the jury’s right?” Mr. George asked in a news conference after the sentencing. “Anyone who heard what happened in this trial,” he said, “should have reasonable doubt.”

Mr. McCowen, who seemed to sob as the verdict was read, addressed the court before he was sentenced.

“All through this whole trial, I sat here, thinking to myself, ‘Why me?’ ” Mr. McCowen said. “Your honor, I’d like to say I’m an innocent man in this case.”

Mr. McCowen initially denied having any physical contact with Ms. Worthington, the prosecutor said. But when told that the police had matched his DNA to the crime, Mr. McCowen said he had consensual sex with Ms. Worthington and had beaten her; he also said that a friend of his had stabbed her. The friend was never charged. The prosecutors said that Mr. McCowen told them during a six-hour interrogation, “it could have been me.”

Mr. George disputed the police version of the interrogation, saying that Mr. McCowen had been on drugs when it was done, and complaining that it was not recorded.

Mr. George suggested that because Mr. McCowen is black, investigators and jurors were less inclined to believe that Ms. Worthington would have consented to have sex with him. He also said that the police had not investigated a report of a white man in a dark-colored car leaving Ms. Worthington’s driveway.

On Thursday, Michael O’Keefe, district attorney for the Cape and Islands, told Court TV, which had provided coverage of the case, “We were convinced, we remain convinced, and the jury certainly was convinced, I believe by their verdict, that Mr. McCowen acted alone in this terrible crime.”

The verdict came after eight days of deliberations in the five-week trial. On Monday, the jury said it was deadlocked. On Tuesday, a juror was removed from the panel because, in phone conversations with her boyfriend, who had been jailed recently in an unrelated shooting case, she was recorded criticizing police officers and discussing news reports of the trial. An alternate replaced the juror, and deliberations started over.

On Thursday, Mr. George filed a motion concerning the dismissal of the juror, and suggested that the authorities had arranged for the boyfriend’s calls to be recorded so the juror could be removed.

Before the sentencing, Mary Worthington, the victim’s cousin, read two statements, including one from Amyra Chase, a family friend who is raising Ms. Worthington’s daughter, who is now 7.

“Ava endured a day and a half that was so terrible that to say she was not brutally victimized would be an understatement,” Ms. Chase wrote. She said Ava “has emerged from that night as a very bright, confident young woman.”

She added: “The first day of school, I stood there with such pride along with a sadness that Christa wasn’t there. Christa was robbed of the privilege and delight of raising her daughter.”

    Trash Collector Guilty in Cape Cod Slaying, NYT, 17.11.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/17/us/17cape.html

Plea Deal in Seton Hall Dormitory Fire

November 16, 2006
The New York Times
By RONALD SMOTHERS

NEWARK, Nov. 15 — Nearly seven years after an early-morning dormitory fire that killed three freshmen at Seton Hall University, two former students on trial for murder in the case pleaded guilty on Wednesday to arson and witness tampering, charges that carry five-year prison terms. The fire led to nationwide changes in fire safety codes on college campuses.

Prosecutors said they abandoned the murder charges to accept the pleas because of concern that the jury could be confused and unconvinced by a circumstantial case relying on complex scientific evidence. Under the agreement, which was announced as opening arguments in the long-awaited trial were scheduled to begin, prosecutors also dropped charges against the parents, sister and friend of one of the suspects, who they had said had helped cover up the crime.

Families of the three dead freshmen sat solemnly in the courtroom as the victims’ two former classmates, Joseph T. Lepore and Sean Michael Ryan, both 26, recounted their crime.

“I, along with Sean Ryan, lit a banner on fire that was draped across the couch in the third-floor lounge of Boland Hall on Jan. 19, 2000, at approximately 4 a.m.,” Mr. Lepore read without inflection from a copy of the signed agreement. “When doing so, I did not intend to injure anyone. It was a prank that got out of hand.”

The brief session in a courtroom crowded with relatives of the dead and some of the 50 people injured in the fire was an abrupt end to a trial that had barely begun, with a jury, painstakingly selected over eight weeks, sworn and charged; copious trial exhibits ready; and months of pretrial motions finally settled.

After a flurry of secret negotiations over 48 hours, Judge Harold W. Fullilove of Superior Court announced, in almost whispered tones, “I understand that an agreement has been worked out.”

Lawyers for each side claimed the deal as a victory and said the other was to blame for the long delay in reaching it.

“We can only be as good as our proofs,” Paula Dow, the Essex County prosecutor, said outside the courtroom. “The alternative might have been their walking away with a not-guilty verdict and a smirk on their faces.”

The defense lawyers, in turn, said the prospect of jurors feeling sympathy for the badly scarred burn victims who were expected to testify prompted them to avoid the risk of trial. Their clients had faced prison terms of up to 30 years; now, they can be eligible for parole after 16 months. They are scheduled to be sentenced on Jan. 26.

Joseph and Candice Karol, whose 18-year-old son, Aaron, was one of the three Boland Hall residents killed in the blaze, said they were satisfied with the pleas.

“We have an admission of guilt, and that was what we wanted,” Mr. Karol said in an interview later at his home. “It might not sound like much, but they will be in prison,” he added.

“Of course, nothing will give us what we really want, and that’s our son back.”

Also killed in the fire were John N. Giunta, 18, of Vineland, N.J., and Frank S. Caltabilota, 18, of West Long Branch, N.J.

To reach the agreement, prosecutors agreed to drop charges of felony murder, reckless manslaughter and conspiracy to commit arson. Instead, Mr. Lepore and Mr. Ryan pleaded guilty to third-degree arson and to witness tampering, admitting that they met at a Dunkin’ Donuts in Madison, N.J., the day after the fire with other students who were in the lounge that night to urge them to lie to investigators about what they saw.

Mr. Lepore also pleaded guilty to resisting arrest when officers approached him in force when he was in his car near his Florham Park, N.J., home in June 2003, after a grand jury indicted him in the case.

Also as part of the agreement, the prosecutors dropped the charges of obstruction, witness tampering and lying to investigators against his parents, Joseph and Maria Lepore, his sister, Lauren, 27, and a friend, Santino Cataldo, 24, of East Hanover, N.J.

Michael G. Morris, the prosecutor who was in charge of the case along with Rachel Gran, said that he never believed that the two men had intended to kill anyone when they started the fire, but that murder charges were appropriate whenever someone was killed during a felony, like arson.

But without witnesses who saw the men start the fire, Mr. Morris said, “we never had something that the jury could see and hold in their hands.”

Mr. Morris said that prosecutors, as well as the victims’ families, were both “disappointed and relieved” at the outcome. “They could have come forward nearly seven years ago,” he said, “but instead they behaved like criminals, were pursued like criminals, and now they are going to jail like criminals.”

William J. DeMarco and Salvatore T. Alfano, Mr. Lepore’s lawyers, and Michael S. Bubb, Mr. Ryan’s lawyer, complained at a news conference after the pleas that the murder charges, as well as the charges against the Lepore family and Mr. Cataldo, represented “overkill” by investigators and prosecutors under pressure to solve what was a three-year-old case at the time the two men were indicted.

The reduced charges were “closer to what really happened,” Mr. DeMarco said. While their clients started the fire, Mr. Bubb added, it was a series of “intervening causes,” like the university’s failure to have sprinklers and fire-retardant furniture, that led to the resulting deaths and injuries.

Those causes are among the issues raised in the civil lawsuits that the families of those killed in the fire, as well as some of those injured, have filed against Mr. Lepore and Mr. Ryan as well as against the manufacturer of the furniture used in the dormitory lounge and Argenbright Security, a private firm contracted by the university. Seton Hall was also sued but reached a settlement with the families within about a year after the fire.

Anthony Marchetta, the attorney for Argenbright, said that the pleas would not hurt his client’s defense, because the security firm’s responsibility was keeping the campus secure from outsiders.

“These two guys were residents of the dorm, and in order to prevent this, the security company would have to have known what was in their heads,” he said.

The fallout from the fire in Boland Hall on an icy January night has been both broad and deep. Each year on the anniversary of the fire, Seton Hall has a memorial service at its main campus in South Orange, where a granite stone etched with the word “Remember” sits outside the entrance to Boland Hall.

New Jersey’s governor at the time of the fire, Christie Whitman, ordered a review of fire safety equipment in the state’s 31 public colleges and universities, and the Legislature unanimously passed a bill requiring all dormitories in the state to be retrofitted with sprinkler systems. The previous, 1980s-era laws had required sprinklers only in new dorms, and Boland Hall was built before that.

Nationally, several colleges and universities adopted regulations that require dorm furniture to be made of polyurethane foam that is sufficiently fire retardant to prevent full combustion. This was in response to investigators’ findings that the furniture in the Boland Hall lounge contributed to the thick black smoke and intense heat of the fire. Legislation is pending in Congress that would tie federal financial aid to colleges to the installation of sprinklers, smoke detectors and flame-retardant furniture.

In the courtroom on Wednesday morning, families of the dead and injured filled most of two rows and sat quietly during the admissions of guilt by the two men. Prosecutors had kept them informed as plea negotiations progressed, so they were unsurprised at the result.

John Holl contributed reporting.

    Plea Deal in Seton Hall Dormitory Fire, NYT, 16.11.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/16/nyregion/16seton.html?hp&ex=1163739600&en=70da1a7f64317463&ei=5094&partner=homepage

A Settlement Brings Back Memories of a Dark Day

November 16, 2006
The New York Times
By KAREEM FAHIM and TINA KELLEY

In the years since the fire in a Seton Hall University dormitory burned more than half his body, Alvaro Llanos became a father, went back to school and had more than 30 operations: to help him move, to ease the tightness of his grafted skin, to hide his scars. His physical pain receded, but yesterday, the hurt of anger washed over him again.

“I’m waiting all this time for justice, and they get a slap on the wrist,” Mr. Llanos, 25, who is still a student at Seton Hall, said in a telephone interview. “In the beginning, I didn’t know how much I cared. Today I found out.”

Mr. Llanos lived across the hall from Sean Michael Ryan and Joseph T. Lepore, his classmates who pleaded guilty yesterday to reduced charges of arson and witness tampering, and face a maximum of five years in prison. He had also known John N. Giunta, one of the three students who died in the fire, from a program the summer before their freshman year.

“I think they deserved more,” Mr. Llanos said of the sentences, “for everything I’ve been through and the families that lost their kids in the fire.”

That bitterness joined a chorus of other raw emotions yesterday; from those who said the plea agreements would bring some closure, to others who said the victims deserved better.

Joseph Karol, whose 18-year-old son, Aaron, died in the January 2000 blaze, said justice was served.

“We learned today what we had known for some time,” he said, somewhat wearily, speaking by telephone from his home in Greenbrook, N.J. “They lied about it and deceived people because they are cowards who ran and hid for nearly seven years. They were finally forced to admit what they did when faced with a severe prison sentence.”

Aaron Karol, Mr. Giunta and another freshman, Frank S. Caltabilota, died from burns and smoke inhalation after the fire that tore through Boland Hall, the freshman dormitory, sending 600 other students fleeing into the snow. The disaster called national attention to the issue of dormitory safety, and led to the retrofitting of sprinkler systems in New Jersey’s older dormitories.

The teenagers who lived through the fire are now in their mid-20’s; they have children, are holding down jobs, or have moved far away from New Jersey. Many attend an annual remembrance ceremony for the victims. On campus, memory of the fire is still a part of daily life, felt primarily as a human tragedy, but also as the reason students undergo frequent safety drills.

The university president, Msgr. Robert Sheeran, said in a statement that it was not his place “to second-guess the legal or judicial aspects of this case,” and that he hoped Mr. Lepore and Mr. Ryan “will be able to rebuild their lives — lives which, in time, might help and heal others.”

“Today, as every day, I remember the three young men who lost their lives on Jan. 19, 2000,” Monsignor Sheeran said. “I also think of all the others who were injured that night. The loss is irreparable and the scars remain.”

As they entered Boland Hall yesterday, Amanda Albro and Ian Nunley said they were disappointed by the pleas. “Sixteen months, I don’t think that’s very just at all,” said Ms. Albro, 18, a freshman from Aberdeen, N.J., referring to how long the two men will have to serve before being eligible for parole. “I find that quite appalling.”

Mr. Nunley, also 18, from Ventura, Calif., added: “It doesn’t do justice to the students who suffered, or to the university, or to the town.”

“It’s not fair to the kids who lost their lives, or to us,” he said, referring to frequent fire drills students put up with, often in the middle of the night. “For the people who were here, that event stays with them for the rest of their life.”

Across the campus, students complained about the school’s stringent safety regulations, which prohibit toaster ovens, some coffee makers, light bulbs above a certain wattage, posters hung too close to the ceiling, and many kinds of chairs and sofas.

Tara Hart, who was the assistant director of housing and residence life at the time of the fire, said yesterday that it changed the university.

“Fundamentally, for myself and the students I work with today, it has taught us to lead a life of meaning and purpose, and service,” she said. “That’s the greatest testimony any of us can give to John, Frank and Aaron.”

Vincent Scerbo, who lived on the first floor of Boland Hall, said he thought the fire alarm that day was for a fire drill. He tried to sleep through it, he said, but still has not been able to shake the sight of classmates fleeing the building, he said. “I’m not one for ‘an eye for an eye’; I’d rather they had shorter sentences,” he said, adding that he thought Mr. Ryan and Mr. Lepore should apologize to the families of the victims, and show remorse.

“This is a Catholic university,” said Mr. Scerbo, who is now a high school soccer coach in Roxbury, N.J. “Forgiving and forgetting is part of religious belief. I’m pretty sure the families would be able to accept that.”

Mr. Llanos, who is still severely scarred by his burns, now works part-time compiling sports statistics for The Star-Ledger.

When he arrived at Seton Hall, he planned to study computer science. After the fire, he switched to physical therapy. More than six years later, he is still a sophomore.

John Holl contributed reporting.

    A Settlement Brings Back Memories of a Dark Day, NYT, 16.11.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/16/nyregion/16react.html

In Murder Case, New Evidence but Same Cell

November 16, 2006
The New York Times
By JIM DWYER

More than two years ago, investigators from the Queens district attorney’s office sat in Jaime Acevedo’s living room and listened to him describe a night in 1992 — an instant, really — that has yet to end.

Mr. Acevedo, seen by the authorities as an ordinary, law-abiding, working man with no reason to lie, said that he knew the inside details on a little-noticed murder in Woodside, one that seemed to have been solved and settled long ago.

Investigators had never spoken with Mr. Acevedo or realized that he knew anything about the case. But in fact, Mr. Acevedo told them, he had unwittingly given the killer a ride to and from the murder scene. The man he named had never been connected or charged with the crime.

There was more.

Mr. Acevedo said the one person accused and convicted of the murder had nothing to do with it. That man, Joshua Rivera, sentenced to 37 years, had not even been present, according to Mr. Acevedo.

The story did not end there. The district attorney’s investigators found another man who told essentially the same story as Mr. Acevedo: he, too, said that he had been in the car with the killer and that Mr. Rivera was not involved.

Two years later, Mr. Rivera, 36, is still serving time for the murder, and the man named as the real killer by the two new witnesses has not been charged.

In an era when DNA tests seem to have made unraveling convictions as easy as untying a shoe, Mr. Rivera’s case is a reminder that the criminal justice system, by law and custom, generally resists the reopening of jury verdicts, at times even in the face of new evidence that seems strong.

It is also a vivid example of the discretion that prosecutors can exercise in not only bringing cases but also reviewing their outcomes.

After his appeals were exhausted, Mr. Rivera wrote to prosecutors to insist on his innocence. Starting in 2003, prosecutors in an unofficial unit that examined claims of “actual innocence” located the new witnesses, according to court papers.

After those prosecutors raised questions about whether the right man was in prison, the case was turned over to more senior prosecutors. They resisted Mr. Rivera’s first request to overturn the verdict, saying that he and his lawyer could have found witnesses like Mr. Acevedo before his trial in 1995.

Now, however, as Mr. Rivera’s advocates continue to press his cause, the district attorney’s office has agreed to have the new evidence presented to a judge, who will consider whether it casts doubt on the verdict, a senior prosecutor in the Queens office said.

In particular, the judge will be asked to weigh whether the new evidence is strong enough to contradict the original testimony of two eyewitnesses who said that they saw Mr. Rivera do the killing. That senior prosecutor said he could not speak for attribution because the case is pending in court.

At its beginnings, the case seemed numbingly familiar, and simple.

On the morning of Sept. 19, 1992, a man named Leonard Aquino stood with another man in front of a building at 47-25 48th Street in Woodside. He was approached by a couple of men who spoke briefly, then opened fire. Mr. Aquino was killed; another man, Paul Peralta, was shot, but survived.

Mr. Rivera, whose nickname was Shorty 140, was known to many people in the building and had been in trouble before, including a conviction for gun possession.

His picture was picked out of an array of photos by Mr. Peralta and another witness, and in February 1993, five months after the shooting, Mr. Rivera was charged with killing Mr. Aquino and shooting Mr. Peralta. He was convicted in December 1995.

His efforts to overturn the case were supported by a friend who grew up with Mr. Rivera in Astoria, Sherman Jackson, who had competed with him in break dancing competitions. After a stint in the Marine Corps, Mr. Jackson became a prosecutor in the Queens district attorney’s office.

Troubled by his old friend’s assertion that he had been wrongly convicted, Mr. Jackson raised the question of Mr. Rivera’s innocence in 2003 with his boss, Gregory Lasak, who was a homicide prosecutor and had also been involved in the exoneration of 20 innocent people.

Based on a prison letter from Mr. Rivera, Mr. Lasak had already begun an investigation into Mr. Rivera’s case, according to Mr. Jackson. As part of that review, investigators tracked down Mr. Acevedo and the second man, Kenny Chung, who said he was in the car with the killer that night in 1992.

Meanwhile, Mr. Jackson, who had gone into private practice, spoke with Mr. Peralta and learned that he was wavering on his identification of Mr. Rivera as the gunman. He also spoke with a neighbor who had given first aid to Mr. Aquino and Mr. Peralta. The neighbor said that Mr. Peralta had told her that it had all happened too quickly for him to recognize his attackers.

Mr. Lasak began serving as a State Supreme Court justice in 2004. Mr. Rivera is represented by Chris Renfroe, a private defense lawyer in Queens.

Mr. Renfroe said that he believed that when District Attorney Richard A. Brown focused on the details of the case, he would quickly move to resolve it in Mr. Rivera’s favor.

Mr. Brown declined to comment on the case. But in the past, his staff had said that the case was not black and white. For one thing, Mr. Chung had consented to be interviewed only in the presence of a known gang member and had refused to identify the fourth person in the car.

Mr. Jackson, the former prosecutor and friend of Mr. Rivera’s, said: “The time for delaying has ended. The prosecution could shine from this because justice goes both ways, putting people in jail and getting them out.”

This week, Mr. Acevedo — who had no role in the trials and never spoke with the authorities until late 2004 — sat in a restaurant in Astoria and recalled the night of the murder.

He was 22 years old and had been working steadily in supermarkets and delivering advertising circulars since he was 14, which allowed him to buy the car that he drove into Manhattan that evening with three other men. One was Mr. Chung, who has also spoken with prosecutors about the events; the other two were acquaintances whom he knew only as Aid and Everlast.

After going to clubs, they returned to Queens near dawn. Mr. Acevedo said that his passengers directed him to pull over at 48th Street in Woodside.

The men he knew as Aid and Everlast got out of the car, and Mr. Acevedo said he stepped out a moment later. He estimated he was about five or seven car lengths away when they approached the door of the building. He heard shots, he said.

“I had no idea what was going to happen,” Mr. Acevedo said. “I saw flashes off the wall of the building.” The two men came racing toward him, and one of them dropped a gun in the curb and picked it up. They jumped in the car and fled the scene, he said.

Mr. Acevedo said he had no choice but to drive them away. “They had a gun and just shot someone,” he said.

In the car, he said, they talked about how they had made the approach.

“They said they asked those guys for weed, that was the story, then Aim shot,” Mr. Acevedo said. He dropped them at their homes in Elmhurst.

“Then I just drove around for two hours,” he said. “My head was so full. I didn’t belong with them. I was just being with people I didn’t belong with. I never was a thug.”

He currently holds a full-time, job, though he asked that it not be described. He has not had a girlfriend since the killing.

“I never got married, I never had kids, and these were my dreams,” he said. “At holidays, Thanksgiving with my sisters, sitting there and everyone is having a good time, then you stop. This is in the back of your head.

“When you wake up in the morning, instantly, this goes through my head,” Mr. Acevedo said. “To this day. I don’t even have to fully wake up. Instantly. Every day.”

    In Murder Case, New Evidence but Same Cell, NYT, 16.11.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/16/nyregion/16murder.html?hp&ex=1163739600&en=9828700a9ea37717&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Mom in California drownings faces trial

Updated 11/11/2006 11:30 PM ET
USA Today
By Kim Curtis, Associated Press

SAN FRANCISCO — LaShuan Harris took her three children on a train from Oakland into San Francisco on Oct. 19, 2005. She bought the little boys hot dogs, and they walked along Fisherman's Wharf.

Then Harris undressed the three boys, ages 16 months, 2 and 6, and dropped them one at a time over the low railing into chilly San Francisco Bay, police say.

She knew they couldn't swim and thought she was sending them to heaven. God had commanded her to sacrifice her three boys, her most precious possessions, Harris later told psychiatrists. Passersby said she seemed dazed, disoriented.

The 23-year-old mother was arrested as she pushed an empty stroller away from Pier 7.

Harris was charged with three counts of murder and has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. Her trial is scheduled to begin this week; if convicted, she faces life in prison.

Now 24, Harris remains in the psychiatric section of the San Francisco County jail. Public defender Teresa Caffese calls her the rare client who "doesn't have a mean bone in her body."

Her family says Harris is mentally ill and needs to be treated in a mental institution, rather than incarcerated in a prison. But prosecutor Linda Allen says that's a decision for a jury.

Legal experts say proving legal insanity is always a tall order.

"The burden of proof is on her," said Pete Kossoris, a former Ventura County prosecutor. "She has to show that, by reason of some mental defect or disease, she didn't know the nature of what she was doing or that it was wrong."

During pretrial hearings, Harris sat in court smiling slightly, eyes downcast. She laughed and talked to herself; she sometimes rocked back and forth. At least three mental health professionals have diagnosed paranoid schizophrenia. She's also borderline mentally retarded, with an IQ of 69, according to her lawyer.

Caffese contends Harris never intended to murder her children.

"She was trapped inside an overwhelming delusion, one that kept telling her to take her kids and 'put them in the water' to send them to Jesus," Caffese said in a recent court filing. "And that is what she believes she did."

She said Harris believes her children are in heaven — her youngest now potty-trained, her eldest in school. She sends God postcards written in crayon.

The case is a tragedy, conceded Allen, the prosecutor, but added that Harris must be punished nonetheless.

"She walked around the pier and cried because she loved her children, showing that she understood she had killed them and that they were gone," Allen said in court documents. "Even if defendant thought she was sending her children to heaven, she was doing so by killing them."

Avis Harris, 43, said her daughter was an outgoing and well-behaved girl who rarely got in trouble. She regularly attended Bible study and church services, often with her grandmother.

"She was very strung out on God," Avis Harris said in a recent interview with the Associated Press, along with her sister Joyce. "She believed that God could do anything."

LaShuan Harris was 15 when she became involved with the 21-year-old man who would father her children. When she got pregnant at 16, her mother considered pursuing criminal charges against the man.

"She was happy that she was pregnant. She was thrilled," said Avis Harris. "She was doing good. I didn't want her to be a follower. I wanted her to be a leader."

It was months before Harris would allow anyone else to hold Treyshun, her firstborn. Later, her aunts took care of the boy while Harris worked as a nurse's assistant at a convalescent home.

Five years later, a second son, Taronta, was born. Harris was 21 and living on her own for the first time.

"There was a lot of stress on her at that time," Avis Harris said.

And the cracks began to show.

She saw bugs in the linens at work. She would fail to recognize her own name. She stared through people instead of at them, and giggled and laughed to herself. She stayed awake all night and talked on the phone with no one at the other end, her mother said.

Harris had her first psychotic episode in February 2004, when she tried to jump out a window, her family said. Doctors prescribed Haldol, a drug used to treat schizophrenia, but she stopped taking it.

She ended up at a homeless shelter, and she got pregnant again.

Harris' case is proof that mental illness can overcome even a mother's love for her own children, Caffese said.

Avis Harris believes the system let her daughter down. Joyce Harris doesn't know whom to blame.

"My niece is sick. She needs the help that wasn't given to her before. A tragic thing had to happen," she said. "I love and miss my nephews. On Oct. 19, four people were lost, but one is still here. Don't make her suffer because she's sick. She needs help."

Associated Press writer David Kravets contributed to this report.

    Mom in California drownings faces trial, UT, 11.11.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-11-11-bay-drownings_x.htm

Man Gets 245 Yrs. for 3 Killings in Ind.

November 4, 2006
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 7:09 a.m. ET
The New York Times

CROWN POINT, Ind. (AP) -- A man originally charged with killing seven people more than a decade ago was sentenced Friday to 245 years in prison for three of the slayings and the rape of a teenage girl.

Eugene Britt, who turns 49 on Saturday, will serve that sentence concurrently with his sentence of life in prison plus 100 years for the 1995 slaying of an 8-year-old girl.

Britt pleaded guilty but mentally ill on Oct. 6 to murder in the perpetration of rape in the deaths of Nakita Moore, 14, Tonya Dunlap, 24, and Maxine Walker, 41; and in the rape of the 13-year-old.

He had also admitted to raping and killing three other women -- Betty Askew, 50, Michelle Burns, 27, and Deborah McHenry, 41 -- but charges in those deaths were dropped in the plea agreement, under which he waived his right to appeal.

Last November, Britt was arrested in the August slaying of Sarah Lynn Paulsen, 8. In a confession to police in her death, Britt admitted to nine killings, though no charges were ever filed in two of the cases.

Britt reached his plea agreement in the killings of Moore, Dunlap and Walker a week after a judge ruled he was mentally retarded and could not be sentenced to the death penalty.

Shaking and weeping in the courtroom Friday, Britt said he regretted his crimes.

''I'm truly sorry for my sins and I take full responsibility for my actions, ain't nobody but myself,'' he said. ''God knows I'm guilty. God knows I'm guilty.''

Defense attorney Gojko Kasich asked the judge to recommend that Britt be held in isolation. The judge said Britt will be housed in a maximum-security prison.

Prosecutor Bernard A. Carter said in a statement that Britt had inflicted ''unfathomable'' violence on his victims and expressed sympathy to their relatives.

''This plea and sentence ensures that he will spend the rest of his life in prison -- never to inflict such agony on other victims and their families,'' Carter said.

    Man Gets 245 Yrs. for 3 Killings in Ind., NYT, 4.11.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Indiana-Serial-Killings.html

Authorities file arson, murder charges in deadly California wildfire

Updated 11/3/2006 2:22 AM ET
By Maggie Downs, Keith Matheny and Erica Solvig, The Desert Sun
USA Today

RIVERSIDE, Calif. — As firefighters prepared to remember five of their own in a memorial service Sunday, an auto mechanic pleaded not guilty Thursday to setting the blaze that killed the men.

"The evidence is overwhelming" against Raymond Oyler, a resident of nearby Beaumont, Riverside County District Attorney-elect Rod Pacheco told reporters Thursday.

Oyler, 36, faces five counts of first-degree murder and 21 arson-related charges following the Esperanza fire, which investigators say was set Oct. 26. The wind-whipped fire blackened 40,200 acres and destroyed 34 homes in five days in dry, mountainous terrain about 20 miles west of Palm Springs.

The five U.S. Forest Service firefighters died from injuries suffered on the day the fire started. They were trying to protect a mountain home surrounded by steep gullies, the Forest Service says.

The five — Capt. Mark Loutzenhiser, 43, of Idyllwild; Jason McKay, 27, of Phelan; Jess McLean, 27, of Beaumont; Daniel Hoover-Najera, 20, of San Jacinto; and Pablo Cerda, 23, of Fountain Valley — will be honored in a public memorial service at 1 p.m. Sunday at the Hyundai Pavilion in San Bernardino.

Oyler stood slumped over and reserved in handcuffs and an orange jumpsuit before Judge Janice McIntyre in Riverside County Superior Court on Thursday as he was formally charged. He is being held without bail at a county jail in Riverside. If convicted, he could face the death penalty.

The district attorney's office said in court documents that Oyler is suspected of having set as many as 10 additional fires in the area dating back to June.

Mark McDonald, a San Bernardino attorney hired by Oyler's family to represent him, said he may ask that any trial be moved, citing the "highly emotionally charged case."

Oyler "adamantly denies any involvement" in the Esperanza or other fires, McDonald said.

"He is distraught, scared ... almost catatonic," McDonald said after the hearing.

Authorities would not discuss what evidence they have against Oyler, who was identified as a "person of interest" in the Esperanza fire when apprehended Tuesday.

Staci Burger, 23, whose fianc? McKay, was among the five firefighters who died, selected photographs of him to run in a slide show at Sunday's service.

"To be honest, I don't know how I'm going to make it through the day," Burger said.

Burger had had her mind on different plans before the fire — wedding plans.

She said that she had the ring picked out and that McKay had wanted to wait until Christmas to propose properly, after asking for her father's permission.

Now she pores through photos. She wants McKay's favorite song, Alan Jackson's Like Red on a Rose, to accompany them.

She wants her boyfriend to be remembered as someone who loved the people he worked with as much as he loved his job. "That crew was a family. They adored each other," she said. "And I've discovered a brotherhood of firefighters I never knew existed before."

Tomas Patlan, a U.S. Forest Service spokesman, said fire departments from all over the country have expressed interest in participating in the service.

"A lot of fire service agencies will send equipment to represent their departments," he said. "A procession like that can go on for miles — and this one probably will."

As planning for the memorial service continues, details about it will be added to a website: www.engine57memorial.org.

The five deaths are the greatest loss of firefighters in a single wildfire since 14 were killed in the Storm King Mountain fire near Glenwood Springs, Colo., in 1994, according to statistics from the National Interagency Fire Center.

Contributing: Marie McCain

    Authorities file arson, murder charges in deadly California wildfire, UT, 3.11.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-11-02-arson-suspect_x.htm

Virginia sheriff, 12 employees indicted

Updated 11/2/2006 3:03 PM ET
AP
USA Today

ROANOKE, Va. (AP) — A sheriff and 12 current and former officers in a hard-luck rural county that once billed itself the "Sweatshirt Capital of the World" were charged Thursday in a scheme to sell drugs seized from criminals back to the community.

A former postal worker, a former probation officer and five other people also were indicted by federal prosecutors. The charges included racketeering conspiracy, weapons charges, narcotics distribution, obstruction of justice and perjury.

H. Franklin Cassell — the sheriff of Henry County, a former textile hub situated about 50 miles from Roanoke — was quoted by investigators as saying the only way to acquire wealth is to be "a little crooked and not get caught."

Cassell owns large tracts of land and a trucking company and has reported more than $20,000 in dividends yearly, the government said.

Prosecutors said that for the past eight years, cocaine, steroids, marijuana and other drugs that had been seized by the sheriff's department were resold to the public. A sergeant who agreed to cooperate with investigators was paid off by the ring to use his house for distributing drugs, authorities said.

"It is disgraceful corruption," U.S. Attorney John Brownlee said.

Cassell was charged with impeding the investigation by the FBI and federal drug enforcement agents and with money laundering. He was in custody Thursday and awaited a bail hearing in the afternoon.

Fourteen others also were in custody, and police had been in contact with the rest of those indicted except for one defendant who was at large, Brownlee said.

The sheriff's department has 96 officers. State police and officers from the Henry County city of Martinsville are helping to run the department in the meantime.

Cassell has been sheriff since 1992 in the county of about 58,000 residents along the North Carolina line.

The region used to be a center of the furniture and textile industries. But Henry County suffered about 10,000 layoffs in the 1990s as the factories closed. Its unemployment rate reached double-digits during the early part of this decade.

The area is now best known for the Martinsville Speedway, where NASCAR races are run twice a year.

A few years ago, former county administrator Sid Clower went to prison for embezzling more than $818,000 between 1993 and 2002 as the county sank into economic despair. He used the money for gifts and trips and to support an out-of-wedlock child.

    Virginia sheriff, 12 employees indicted, UT, 2.11.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-11-02-sheriff-drugs_x.htm

Man gets 10-year sentence for circumcision of 2-year-old daughter

Updated 11/1/2006 4:58 PM ET
AP
USA Today

LAWRENCEVILLE, Ga. (AP) — An Ethiopian immigrant who was convicted Wednesday of the genital mutilation of his 2-year-old daughter was sentenced to 10 years in prison in what was believed to be the first such criminal case in the United States.
Khalid Adem, 30, was found guilty of aggravated battery and cruelty to children. Prosecutors said he used scissors to remove his daughter's clitoris in his family's Atlanta-area apartment in 2001. The child's mother, Fortunate Adem, said she did not discover it until more than a year later.

Adem, who had no criminal record, could have been sentenced to up to 40 years in prison. He held his face in his hands and wept loudly after the jury's verdict was read.

During her father's trial, the girl, now 7, clutched a teddy bear as she testified on videotape that her father "cut me on my private part."

Federal law specifically bans the practice of genital mutilation, but many states do not have a law addressing it. Georgia lawmakers, with the support of the girl's mother, passed an anti-mutilation law last year. But Adem was not tried under that law since it did not exist when his daughter was cut.

During the trial, Adem testified he never circumcised his daughter or asked anyone else to do so. He said he grew up in Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, and considers the practice more prevalent in rural areas.

Adem's attorney acknowledged that the girl had been cut, but implied that the family of the girl's mother, who immigrated from South Africa, may have been responsible. The Adems divorced three years ago, and attorney Mark Hill suggested that the couple's daughter was coached to testify against her father by her mother, who has full custody of the child.

Adem, who cried throughout the trial and during his testimony, was asked what he thought of someone who believes in the practice. He replied: "The word I can say is 'mind in the gutter.' He is a moron."

The practice crosses ethnic and cultural lines and is not tied to a particular religion. Activists say it is intended to deny women sexual pleasure. In its most extreme form, the clitoris and parts of the labia are removed and the labia that remain are stitched together.

Knives, razors or even sharp stones are usually used, according to a 2001 department report. The tools are frequently not sterilized, and often, many girls are circumcised at the same ceremony, leading to infection.

It is unknown how many girls have died from the procedure, either during the cutting or from infections, or years later in childbirth. Nightmares, depression, shock and feelings of betrayal are common psychological side effects, according to a 2001 federal report.

Since 2001, the State Department estimates that up to 130 million women worldwide have undergone circumcision.

    Man gets 10-year sentence for circumcision of 2-year-old daughter, UT, 1.11.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-11-01-georgia_x.htm