National Roundup

New York
For escapee, jail to mean 23 hours a day in a cell
ROMULUS, N.Y. (AP) — The surviving escapee from a prison break and three-week manhunt will spend 23 hours a day in a maximum-security cell, much more confined than he and a fellow murder convict were in the prison from which they managed a getaway, officials said Sunday.

David Sweat, who was shot and wounded during his June 28 capture, was taken early Sunday from Albany Medical Center to the infirmary at the Five Points Correctional Facility in the central New York town of Romulus, the state Department of Corrections and Community Supervision said in a news release.

After at least 24 hours in the infirmary for a medical evaluation, he’ll be among the up to 150 men held in its Special Housing Unit, where each prisoner sleeps, eats, washes and spends nearly all his time in a 105-square-foot cell with a bed, a writing platform, a toilet, a sink and a shower. The inmates generally are allowed out of their cells to exercise for an hour a day.

Sweat, 35, will be put on suicide watch, the corrections department noted.

Set about 200 miles west of Albany amid New York’s Finger Lakes, the 1,300-inmate prison opened in 2000. It housed convicted murderer Timothy Vail for a time after he and another inmate scaled down a homemade rope to escape from Elmira Correctional Facility in 2003.

Five Points Correctional is 155 years newer than Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, from which Sweat and fellow inmate Richard Matt escaped June 6.

Authorities said Matt and Sweat cut through their adjoining cell walls over months, climbed down catwalks to tunnels, got hold of contractors’ tools, broke through a brick wall, cut into and out of a steam pipe and cut a chain holding a manhole cover outside the prison to get away. Sweat is serving a life sentence for killing a sheriff’s deputy; Matt, 49, was serving 25 years to life after being convicted of kidnapping and dismembering his former boss.

Clinton Correctional is maximum-security, but as residents of the prison’s “honor” block and workers in its tailor shop, Matt and Sweat were able to spend considerable time out of their cells.

They got a guard to give them art supplies, tools and access to a catwalk in exchange for favors and paintings, and they shared their escape plans with a tailor-shop instructor who gave them hacksaw blades and even agreed to be their getaway driver before she backed out, prosecutors said. The guard and instructor have pleaded not guilty to various charges.

The prison’s then-superintendent and 11 other staffers were put on leave after the escape. The honor block has been temporarily closed, and new security measures are being enacted.

Matt was shot dead when a U.S. border patrol team caught up with him June 26 in woods near Malone, about 30 miles from Clinton Correctional and near the Canadian border. Sweat was captured a few miles away, in Constable, two days later.


Massachusetts
Man charged with threatening Obama’s life
BOSTON (AP) — A Massachusetts man has been charged with posting on an FBI website that he planned to kill President Barack Obama.

Andrew O’Keefe, of Mansfield, has been charged with a felony count of posting an online threat against the president.

According to court documents, when law enforcement officers tried to interview O’Keefe regarding the May 13 posting, he refused to speak with officers outside his home.

Authorities say more than 100 weapons were found at his home and in his vehicle, including swords, double-edged knives, hatchets and spears.

The 28-year-old O’Keefe faces a maximum sentence of five years in prison if convicted.
It wasn’t immediately clear if O’Keefe has an attorney to comment on the charges.

Maine
Advocate for kids  slapped with suit for defamation
PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — An advocate for sexually abused children has used aggressive tactics to campaign against those he believes have harmed children or covered up for abusers. A federal jury will decide whether the activist, Paul Kendrick, went too far in leveling accusations against an orphanage founder in Haiti.

Michael Geilenfeld and Raleigh, North Carolina-based Hearts with Haiti have sued for defamation, saying Kendrick’s “false and heinous” allegations have cost the charity more than $2 million in donations.

Kendrick, who lives in Freeport, Maine, says he’s eager for jurors to hear about what he described as “disgusting and despicable” things that were done to the alleged victims.

Geilenfeld’s lawyers hold Kendrick responsible for Geilenfeld’s arrest in Haiti. A judge cleared Geilenfeld, but Haiti’s justice minister has said the verdict was improperly reached and there will be additional proceedings.

Minnesota
Box cutter sent terror defendant back to custody
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — A federal judge says a Minnesota man will stay in custody pending sentencing on a terror charge after a box cutter was found under his bed.

Abdullahi Yusuf pleaded guilty in February to one count of conspiring to provide material support to the Islamic State group. He was allowed to stay at a halfway house before sentencing and participate in a program designed to give him positive direction.

But in April, he was sent back into custody for violating halfway house rules.

The violation wasn’t disclosed until Monday.

U.S. District Judge Michael Davis says in a written order that halfway house staff found the box cutter under Yusuf’s bed. Yusuf shared the room with others, and denied knowledge of the box cutter.

Yusuf’s attorneys didn’t immediately return messages seeking comment.


North Carolina
Judge: Hog farm lawsuits: Dump talk of China ties
ROSE HILL, N.C. (AP) — A federal judge hearing a lawsuit over the bad smells endured by North Carolina neighbors of industrial hog farms says lawyers need to remove references to the Chinese government, the Communist Party, and that country’s People’s Liberation Army.

U.S. District Judge W. Earl Britt agreed with industry lawyers that the references to Chinese ownership of a major U.S. pork producer are inflammatory.

More than 500 neighbors of industrial-scale hog operations across eastern North Carolina filed two dozen lawsuits complaining the smells and clouds of flies have persisted since the factory farms moved in during the 1990s.

The lawsuits target factory-farms pioneer Murphy-Brown LLC. The company was bought by Virginia-based Smithfield Foods in 2000. Smithfield was purchased in 2013 in the largest takeover of a U.S. company by a Chinese corporation.