Detroit: Facebook post gets Detroit-area juror in hot water
MOUNT CLEMENS, Mich. (AP) — A judge removed a juror from a trial in suburban Detroit after the young woman wrote on Facebook that the defendant was guilty. The problem? The trial wasn’t over.
Hadley Jons, of Warren just north of Detroit, could be found in contempt when she returns to the Macomb County circuit court Thursday.
Jons, 20, was a juror in a case of resisting arrest. On Aug. 11, a day off from the trial and before the prosecution finished its case, she wrote on Facebook that it was “gonna be fun to tell the defendant they’re guilty.”
The post was discovered by defense lawyer Saleema Sheikh’s son.
Circuit Judge Diane Druzinski confronted Jons the next day and replaced her with an alternate.
“You don’t know how disturbing this is,” Druzinski said, according to The Macomb Daily.
A message seeking comment was left for Jons on Monday.
“I would like to see her get some jail time, nothing major, a few hours or overnight,” Sheikh said. “This is the jury system. People need to know how important it is.”
Sheikh’s son, Jaxon Goodman, discovered the comment while checking jurors’ names on the Internet. He works in his mother’s law office.
Without Jons, the jury convicted Sheikh’s client of a felony but couldn’t agree on a separate misdemeanor charge.
Massachusetts: Parents of dead soldiers sue over insurance benefits
SPRINGFIELD, Mass. (AP) — The parents of six deceased U.S. soldiers accuse Prudential Financial of paying paltry interest on military life insurance benefits and keeping more generous interest earnings for itself.
Five plaintiffs joined the original plaintiff Monday in a lawsuit that was filed in July in U.S. District Court in Springfield, Mass.
They say Prudential paid them 0.5 to 1.5 percent interest on payouts it held if the beneficiaries did not cash them out after the soldiers’ deaths. But they say the company made 5 to 6 percent interest on that money.
The Newark, N.J.-based insurer defends its handling of the money. Spokesman Bob DeFillippo says it is kept in easily accessible accounts for which the interest rate is separate from long-term investments that bring the higher returns.
Georgia: Convicted antifreeze killer dies in prison
ATLANTA (AP) — A woman who killed her husband and later her boyfriend by poisoning them with antifreeze has died in an Atlanta prison.
Georgia Department of Correction spokeswoman Sharmelle Brooks says 42-year-old Lynn Turner was found unresponsive in her cell Monday morning and could not be revived.
Brooks says she doesn’t know how Turner died. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation’s medical examiner’s office is looking into it.
The former 911 operator was sentenced to life without parole in 2007 after a jury found her guilty in the 2001 killing of her boyfriend, firefighter Randy Thompson.
Turner was already serving a life sentence for the 1995 death of her husband, police officer Glenn Turner. She had maintained her innocence.
