National Roundup

Pennsylvania
Report: Bias evident in stop-and-frisk practice
PHILADELPHIA (AP) — A new report finds evidence of continued racial bias in the stop-and-frisk practices of Philadelphia police despite a 2011 federal consent decree calling for reforms.

The court-ordered report by civil rights lawyers was filed Tuesday in federal court.

It shows a third or more of stops and frisks by Philadelphia police in the first half of 2015 were made without reasonable suspicion. Blacks were the subject of 69 percent of those stops and 57 percent of those frisks even though the population of Philadelphia is only 44 percent black.

What’s more, the analysis found frisks of blacks are considerably less likely to turn up anything than those of whites.

Police Commissioner Richard Ross says the report shows the department has work to do.

Virginia
Clerical missteps preceded inmate’s death, says report
PORTSMOUTH, Va. (AP) — A mentally ill man who was found dead in a Virginia jail last year was not on a waiting list for a bed at a state mental hospital, even though a judge had ordered him to be sent there, authorities said.

State investigators released a report into 24-year-old Jamycheal Mitchell’s death on Monday, revealing that his name wasn’t among a list of 34 inmates waiting for a bed at Williamsburg’s Eastern State Hospital, the Richmond Times-Dispatch reported.

Mitchell was found dead at the Hampton Roads Regional Jail in August, four months after he was arrested and accused of stealing a candy bar, a snack cake and a soda from a Portsmouth convenience store. The items totaled about $5.
The Portsmouth General District Court told investigators it mailed the judge’s order to the hospital on May 27, six days after a judge issued it. Investigators found no evidence that the order was mailed or received.

Another copy of the order was faxed to the mental health facility on July 31, but none of the weekly logs of inmates waiting for a bed prepared on Aug. 4, Aug. 11 or Aug. 18 contained Mitchell’s name, according to the report.

A medical examiner concluded that Mitchell died of a heart condition, accompanied by a loss of at least 10 percent of his body weight.

Since Mitchell’s death, the Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Services has hired a full-time employee at Eastern State to focus on the waiting list and assist in their transition to and from jail, department spokeswoman Maria Reppas said.

Reppas said the hospital has established a goal that anyone ordered to a state facility for competency restoration be admitted within one week of receipt of the order.

Missouri
Robbery attempt fails when victim realizes gun is toy
MAPLEWOOD, Mo. (AP) — A St. Louis-area robbery was foiled when the owner of a business realized the would-be robber was using a water pistol.

KMOV-TV reports that Amanuel Perkins is charged with first-degree attempted robbery. He is jailed on $25,000 bond and does not yet have an attorney.

Police say the crime happened last week at Sole Survivor Leather store in Maplewood. Police say Perkins demanded money and the store owner feared for his life before realizing it was a multicolored water pistol, and not a real gun, that was being pointed at him.

The store owner pushed away the gun and told the assailant to leave, before police arrived to make the arrest.

Police say Perkins told them it was a St. Patrick’s Day joke.

Nebraska
Judge bars state from adding boy to sex offender list
LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — A federal judge has blocked the state from placing a 13-year-old boy who moved to Nebraska from Minnesota on its public list of sex offenders.

The Lincoln Journal Star reports that the Nebraska State Patrol determined the boy had to register when he moved to Nebraska because of a subsection of a law that opted to exclude minors from the Nebraska Sex Offender Registration Act unless they were prosecuted criminally in adult court.

The boy’s family filed a federal lawsuit seeking to block the patrol from putting him on the public registry.

Senior U.S. District Judge Richard G. Kopf concluded that Nebraska’s law doesn’t apply because the boy wasn’t required to register in Minnesota since he was adjudicated in juvenile court, not adult court.

Kentucky
Man found guilty after killing man over storage unit
PADUCAH, Ky. (AP) — A jury has recommended that a western Kentucky man spend 7 ½ years in prison for fatally shooting a man he said was stealing from his storage unit.

The Paducah Sun reports that a McCracken County jury on Monday found 49-year-old Jeffrey Conrad guilty of second-degree manslaughter in connection with the June shooting death of 31-year-old Garlon Casey Cox at a Reidland storage facility.

Authorities said Conrad caught Cox and 36-year-old Brandon York, both of Benton, stealing items from his storage unit.

Conrad says he ordered the men to freeze, but Cox ran into his truck and started backing up in the direction of Conrad’s female friend. Conrad says he then fired at the truck, fatally wounding Cox.

Conrad, who had initially been charged with murder, is scheduled to be sentenced in May.

Pennsylvania
Transcript: Man confessed before hanging self
MEADVILLE, Pa. (AP) — A recently unsealed court transcript shows a Pennsylvania man found hanged in his jail cell last week had confessed to killing his father to another inmate.

Thirty-four-year-old Dustin Halsaver was found hanged Friday in the Crawford County jail.

The Meadville man was awaiting trial on charges he killed his 74-year-old father, Kenneth Halsaver, in September. Police say that happened while Dustin Halsaver was robbing his father’s home in Townville.

The Meadville Tribune asked a judge to unseal the transcript of a closed hearing two days before Dustin Halsaver killed himself.

The transcript shows an inmate told Halsaver’s public defender last month that Halsaver confessed to killing his father, and that Halsaver learned of that at the hearing.
The hearing was held so the public defender could withdraw from Halsaver’s case.