Massachusetts
Defense in slash case wants some evidence tossed
SALEM, Mass. (AP) — Lawyers for a Massachusetts woman charged with slashing her children’s throats and setting fire to their apartment told a judge they plan to argue to a jury that she was mentally ill and not criminally responsible.
Tanicia Goodwin’s lawyers appeared in court Tuesday seeking to have most of the evidence in the case dismissed. Among the evidence are statements she made to police, her lighter fluid-soaked clothing and swabs of lighter fluid and blood taken from her body.
The Salem News reports that the defense argues that Goodwin was not mentally competent in March 2011 when she slashed her then-8-year-old son and 3-year-old daughter in their Salem apartment before setting it on fire. Both children survived.
Goodwin’s lawyers say she wasn’t immediately read her Miranda rights.
The prosecutor sought access to defense experts.
Maryland
Law enforcement: Bomb-making materials seized
GLEN BURNIE, Md. (AP) — Law enforcement officials from Maryland’s Anne Arundel County and the federal government say extensive damage would have resulted if homemade bombs found in a Glen Burnie home had detonated.
Officials with the county police and fire departments and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Fire Arms and Explosives on Tuesday described the devices and materials found Jan. 2 at the home of 28-year-old Todd Dwight Wheeler Jr.
Officers say a search of the home turned up more than 100 pounds of chemicals, including acids, fuels, oxidizers and explosive precursors. Police also say igniters, detonators, books on explosive manufacturing and guns and knives were found.
Wheeler was charged Thursday with manufacturing a destructive device, possessing a destructive device and reckless endangerment. Online court documents do not list a lawyer for Wheeler.
Pennsylvania
Participants of 1971 FBI theft discuss their plot
PHILADELPHIA (AP) — A group of Philadelphia-area anti-war activists who broke into an FBI office in 1971 and stole, then gave to the media, documents showing the agency was targeting protesters has come forward for the first time to give details about the break-in.
Until now, the crime was unsolved. But the period to charge anyone also has lapsed.
The group, including three college professors, a day care director and a cab driver, did much of their plotting in a home in Philadelphia’s Germantown section before the March 8, 1971, raid on the FBI office in Media, about 22 miles southwest of Philadelphia. Their activities came during the Vietnam War protests that deeply divided the country.
Members of the group spoke to the media in the run-up to two chronicles of the break-in: Journalist Betty Medsger’s book, “The Burglary: The Discovery of J. Edgar Hoover’s Secret FBI,” released Tuesday, and “1971,” filmmaker Johanna Hamilton’s documentary to debut later this year.
Keith Forsyth, a 20-year-old cab driver at the time of the break-in, said the members wanted to avoid prosecution — the statute of limitations ran out in 1976. But he said they also kept quiet until now because they wanted the public to pay attention on the revelations from the files.
“We wanted the focus to be on the documents we found and not on us,” he said during a conference call Tuesday with reporters.
One of the memos the group took and leaked called for FBI agents to increase questioning of campus leftists, saying the effort would “enhance the paranoia endemic in these circles and will further serve to get the point across there is an FBI agent behind every mailbox.”
The raiders spent weeks casing the FBI office, sending one participant, Bonnie Raines, in to ask about career opportunities in the FBI for women while noting the lack of locks on file drawers in the office. Meanwhile, Forsyth was learning to pick locks.
On the night of a Muhammad Ali-Joe Frazier championship boxing match, they carried out their plan, leaving the office with suitcases full of files.
Group members said they sorted the documents and only sent to reporters the ones that showed the FBI targeting civilians — and not those that could have compromised national security.
The envelopes they sent out to journalists in early April of that year came from what they called the Citizens Commission to Investigate the FBI. One of them arrived on the desk at The Washington Post of Medsger, who reported then on the revelations and never gave up telling the story of the break-in and its meaning.
“The FBI was conducting a secret war on dissent,” she said Tuesday, “particularly on anti-war activists and African Americans.”
California
Judge ups final lead paint verdict award to $1.15B
SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) — A California judge has increased by $50 million the amount that paint makers will have to pay into a fund to remove lead paint from homes across the state.
Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge James P. Kleinberg on Tuesday issued a final verdict ordering Sherwin Williams, National Lead and ConAgra to pay $1.15 billion after finding that the companies knew the paint was harmful to children.
A tentative ruling issued in December after a five-week nonjury trial had said the companies would have to pay $1.1 billion.
Throughout the case, the industry had argued that the old paint is not a significant public health risk and that the companies never deliberately sold a harmful product.
Kleinberg rejected those arguments Tuesday, citing documents dating back to 1900.
The 10 jurisdictions awarded damages are the counties of Santa Clara, Alameda, Los Angeles, Monterey, San Mateo, Solano and Ventura, and the cities of Oakland, San Diego and San Francisco.
Washington
Email led Seattle library to drop its ban on firearms
SEATTLE (AP) — The Seattle Public Library recently lifted its ban on guns in response to one patron’s complaint.
KUOW reports that Seattle resident Dave Bowman sent an email in August arguing that recent court rulings mean that municipalities cannot ban firearms in the libraries. Officials consulted with the city attorney after Bowman’s email and decided to drop the gun ban in November without a fight.
City Attorney Pete Holmes says he hates that it had to be done, but he saw significant legal risk in keeping the gun ban going.
Librarians were clearly upset by the decision, saying libraries are prime targets for random violence and that guns may escalate confrontations.
Ralph Fascitelli is president of the gun control group Washington CeaseFire. He says the bigger issue is that Washington state has what he describes as weak gun laws.
