National Roundup

Massachusetts
Teen may use insanity defense in teacher killing
SALEM, Mass. (AP) — Lawyers for the Massachusetts teen charged with raping and killing his high school math teacher say they are “mulling” an insanity defense and will ask that the trial be moved.
Philip Chism’s lawyers made the comments Tuesday in a hearing in Salem Superior Court to determine whether statements the now 16-year-old boy made to police should be dismissed as evidence.
The judge said a decision could come as soon as Friday.
Chism is charged with murder as an adult in the October 2013 slaying of Colleen Ritzer, a teacher at Danvers High School. Chism was 14 at the time.
The Salem News reports that Chism’s lawyer, Denise Regan, indicated she will ask that the trial be moved out of Essex County because of the extensive media coverage the case has received.

New Jersey
Former coach in haz­ing case to remain teaching
SAYREVILLE, N.J. (AP) — The former coach of the New Jersey high school football program that had its season canceled amid hazing and sexual assault allegations will remain a teacher.
The Sayreville school board on Tuesday night reassigned George Najjar from the high school, where he has been a physical education teacher for 20 years, to an elementary school.
Najjar lost his coaching job.
The Home News Tribune reports the school board will discipline Najjar by withholding his annual raise for the 2015-16 academic year.
Najjar was suspended with pay on Oct. 16 when officials began investigating his football program.
The team’s 2014 season was canceled days before seven players were accused of hazing and sexually assaulting four teammates inside the locker room. The boys will be tried in juvenile court.

Hawaii
Man receives prison sentence for meth ring
HONOLULU (AP) — A man has been sentenced to more than 12 years in prison for his role in a Molokai crystal meth dealing ring.
The U.S. Attorney’s office in Hawaii says Jon Hans Kaapuni Jr. received the 151-month sentence on Monday in federal court in Honolulu.
Prosecutors say the 35-year-old Kaunakakai man was a manager and supervisor of a long-standing methamphetamine conspiracy on Molokai.
Six people were convicted for their participation in the ring.
His sentence includes forfeiting a custom fishing catamaran and his interest in Molokai real estate that were obtained with drug money.

Mississippi
Ex-prison chief pleads guilty to 2 corruption counts
JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — In a change of course, Former Mississippi Corrections Commissioner Christopher Epps pleaded guilty Wednesday to two counts in a federal corruption case.
Epps, 53, entered the new pleas before U.S. District Judge Henry T. Wingate in Jackson. A sentencing date is pending.
Epps previously had pleaded not guilty to charges that businessman Cecil McCrory gave him hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes starting in 2007. In exchange, prosecutors say, Epps steered prison contracts to companies McCrory owned or for which McCrory was a consultant.
McCrory, 62, pleaded not guilty in November and is scheduled for trial April 6.
Epps was commissioner for 12 years. He resigned the $132,700-a-year job Nov. 5, and federal prosecutors the next day released the indictment charging him and McCrory, who’s a former state lawmaker.
The 49-count indictment was sealed in August and unsealed in November. It charged Epps with 35 felony counts and McCrory with 15 felony counts. Each faced charges including conspiracy, bribery and money laundering.
Epps worked for 32 years at the state Department of Corrections and was its longest-serving commissioner, with a dozen years in the position. He is a double rarity — an employee who started at the lowest rung and worked his way to the top, and an agency director who was chosen by and served under three governors: one Democrat and two Republicans, including current Gov. Phil Bryant.
After Epps pleaded guilty Wednesday, Bryant said in a news release that he appreciates prosecutors pursuing the case.
“I hope it serves as an example that there are consequences for public corruption,” Bryant said.
McCrory served in the state House from 1988 to 1994 and has been a Rankin County justice court judge. He resigned Nov. 4 as president of the Rankin County School Board.
Epps is a native of the tiny Delta town of Tchula, and he earned his bachelor’s degree in elementary education from Mississippi Valley State University. He started working in 1982 as guard at the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman.
Epps was first appointed commissioner by Democratic Gov. Ronnie Musgrove in August 2002, and was kept on the job by the man who unseated Musgrove in 2003, Republican Haley Barbour. Epps served through both of Barbour’s terms, and was kept by a second Republican governor, Phil Bryant, who was elected in 2011. Senators confirmed Epps for the job three times — in April 2003 under Musgrove, in May 2004 in the early months of the Barbour administration and in May 2012 in the early months of the Bryant administration.

Nebraska
Jurors decide man has to pay income taxes
OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — A former Omaha computer engineer who said he didn’t have to file federal individual income tax returns has been convicted of three counts of tax evasion.
A federal jury found Chet West guilty on Tuesday, the Omaha World-Herald said. Prosecutors said the 59-year-old West faces up to five years in prison for each count as well as a $250,000 fine when he’s sentenced on May 18.
According to prosecutors, West, of Nebo, North Carolina, told his Omaha employer from 2007 to 2009, Infocrossing Inc., that he was exempt from taxes. West, who acted as his own attorney, asked in his opening statement for the jury to be his champion and protect him from the U.S. government.
He said he’d found a loophole in the federal tax code and had sent the government a letter explaining that he’d decided not to be subject to income taxes. But prosecutors said the IRS officials said in their reply that American citizens living in the United States can’t opt out of taxes.
West owed more than $52,800 in income taxes over those years, in which he earned more than $272,000, prosecutors said. And he also deposited income into bank accounts opened in the names of companies he created in an effort to hide and conceal his income from the Internal Revenue Service, prosecutors said.