Pennsylvania: Appeal to decide if suspect, then 11, was ‘adult’
PITTSBURGH (AP) — A Superior Court panel in Pittsburgh must decide whether a boy who was 11 at the time should be tried as an adult in the slaying of his father’s pregnant fiancee.
A Lawrence County judge in March refused to move Jordan Brown’s case to juvenile court. Now 13, Brown is charged with shotgunning 26-year-old Kenzie Marie Houk, also killing her unborn son, in their New Galilee farmhouse in February 2009.
The judge ruled Brown wasn’t likely to be rehabilitated in juvenile court because he won’t acknowledge the crime. But Brown’s attorneys were expected to argue Tuesday that asking the boy to do so violates his right against self-incrimination.
The court panel is expected to take weeks or months to rule.
Brown faces life in prison if convicted as an adult, but will be free by age 21 if he’s tried in juvenile court.
New York: Woman, 70, found guilty in husband’s slaying
OSWEGO, N.Y. (AP) — A 70-year-old woman has been convicted of fatally shooting her ex-police officer husband as he slept on a couch in their central New York home.
An Oswego County Court jury found Joyce Malone guilty of first-degree manslaughter Monday after deliberating for about six hours.
Malone was also charged with second-degree murder in the killing of 74-year-old Ralph Malone inside their town of Oswego home last March.
The jury agreed with her defense attorney’s claim that she suffered extreme emotional disturbance and convicted her of the lesser charge.
Joyce Malone’s defense said she suffered decades of verbal and mental abuse from her husband, who worked as a city of Oswego police officer from 1965-73.
She faces five to 25 years in state prison when she’s sentenced March 7.
Nebraska: State sets date for 1st execution since 1997
LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — If inmate Carey Dean Moore is put to death, it would be Nebraska’s first execution since 1997 and its first lethal injection.
The office of Attorney General Jon Bruning filed a motion with the Nebraska Supreme Court on Monday, requesting that a date be set. Moore was sentenced to death for the 1979 murders of two Omaha cabbies.
The state’s last execution occurred in 1997, when Robert Williams was electrocuted for killing three women.
The Nebraska Supreme Court ruled in 2008 that the electric chair amounted to cruel and unusual punishment. Since then, lawmakers approved lethal injection as the state’s sole method.
On Friday, the state received the third drug needed to carry out death sentences. A worldwide shortage of the drug, sodium thiopental, had made it hard to acquire.
Vermont: Man gets 6 years for possessing child pornography
BURLINGTON, Vt. (AP) — The office of Vermont’s federal prosecutor says a 26-year-old Winooski man is going to prison for six years after pleading guilty to a child pornography charge.
Donny Therrien was sentenced Monday in U.S. District Court in Burlington.
Prosecutors say Therrien was charged after he took a laptop computer to a repair shop for service in November 2009.
In August 2009 Therrien was released from prison after serving five years for burglarizing a gun store and stealing 11 handguns.
In addition to the child pornography sentence, Therrien must serve an addition year in prison for violating the conditions of his release following the earlier conviction.
New York: Man gets 107 years in prison
NEW YORK (AP) — A man convicted of fatally shooting one person and injuring four others at a Brooklyn beauty parlor has been sentenced to a maximum of 107 years in prison.
The sentence was imposed Monday on Zaire Paige.
State Supreme Court Justice Vincent Del Giudice told Paige that he and his “co-defendant turned the streets of Brooklyn into a war zone” during the October 2008 shooting.
Co-defendant Robert Crawford was sentenced last month to 53 years to life in prison.
The shooting claimed the life of Lethania Garcia. A Brooklyn police officer was among those injured.
Paige had a minor role in the movie “Brooklyn’s Finest.”
California: Dad is attacked 19 years after poisoning attempt
REDWOOD CITY, Calif. (AP) — A California man whose mother was convicted of trying to kill his dad with a poisoned milkshake two decades ago has been accused of severely beating the father — apparently blaming him for his mother’s imprisonment, authorities said.
Jonathan Ortiz, 20, of Redwood City pleaded not guilty Friday in San Mateo County Superior Court to two counts of assault with a deadly weapon and inflicting great bodily injury.
Ortiz’s mother, Elizabeth Fuentes, has been behind bars since her 2002 conviction on attempted murder charges in the March 1992 poisoning.
Prosecutors said Ortiz attacked his father, Gilbert Ortiz, in June and October and purportedly screamed about what his father had done to Fuentes. During the June attack, he put a knife to his father’s chest, District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe said.
Gilbert Ortiz initially told authorities both times that he had been a victim of robberies. A family member eventually called the detective who investigated the poisoning case to report that Jonathan Ortiz was responsible for the beatings, prosecutors said.
The younger Ortiz, who had been living with his father and other family members since his mother’s imprisonment, told authorities the beatings were done in self-defense, prosecutors said.
His attorney, Gerritt Rutgers, declined to discuss a specific defense with the San Mateo Daily Journal but acknowledged his client’s issues involved adjusting from living with his mother during eight years on the run to living with his father.
Authorities said Fuentes gave Gilbert Ortiz a chocolate milkshake laced with an insecticide called Ortho-7.
Gilbert Ortiz suffered violent convulsions and was unconscious for several days during which his heart stopped and his kidneys failed, authorities said.
As investigators closed in on Fuentes, she fled the country with her then-2-year-old son. She was finally located in 2000 and arrested by Mexican immigration officers in the town of La Barca in Jalisco state.
During her 2002 trial, Fuentes claimed the poisoning was an act of self-defense in an abusive marriage, but prosecutors said she had been jealous and angry about his long work hours.
Fuentes was convicted of attempted murder and sentenced to 13 years to life in prison.
