Rhode Island
Case of sexual harassment by judge proceeding
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) - A Rhode Island district court judge is scheduled to go before a state commission next month that is looking into sexual harassment and judicial misconduct complaints against him.
The Providence Journal reports that more than 50 witnesses are expected to testify on charges alleging Judge Rafael Ovalles mistreated court staff, lawyers and the public and degraded women.
Ovalles has denied the allegations and argues the complaints were lodged against him in retaliation.
The proceedings before the Rhode Island Commission on Judicial Tenure and Discipline are to begin Jan. 23.
The commission will make a recommendation to the state Supreme Court after the hearing.
District Court Chief Judge Jeanne LaFazia has excused 52-year-old Ovalles from all judicial duties with pay, pending the hearing.
Georgia
Prominent lawyer jailed in wife's shooting death
ATLANTA (AP) - A prominent Atlanta attorney has been booked into jail to face charges in the shooting death of his business executive wife.
Fulton County Jail records Thursday show that Claud "Tex" McIver has been charged with felony involuntary manslaughter, along with a misdemeanor count of reckless conduct.
McIver's attorney did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Atlanta police have said McIver was riding in a rear seat of an SUV late Sept. 25 when a gun he was holding fired and the bullet hit his wife, 63-year-old Diane McIver, who was sitting in the front passenger seat. She later died at a hospital.
Tex McIver has said the shooting was an accident.
California
Jury urges death penalty for sex offender who killed 4 women
SANTA ANA, Calif. (AP) - Jurors on Wednesday recommended a death sentence for a California sex offender who abducted and killed four women over six months while wearing an electronic monitoring device.
A judge will make the final decision Feb. 3 after a jury said Steven Dean Gordon, 47, should face capital punishment.
The recommendation came a few minutes after Orange County Superior Court Judge Patrick Donahue considered dismissing a juror who told colleagues during deliberations that she could not vote for the death penalty.
After interviewing the woman, Donahue indicated that he believed she was not heeding her promise to deliberate based on the evidence.
But a few minutes later, the jury announced it had reached a decision.
Gordon, who confessed his role in the killings to police, was convicted last week of murdering four women with ties to prostitution in 2012 and 2013.
Jurors found special circumstances of murder during a kidnapping and multiple murders, making him eligible for the death penalty.
One of the victim's bodies was found at a recycling center in Anaheim, and investigators later tied the case to the earlier disappearance of three other women in Southern California. Their bodies have never been found.
Authorities say Gordon was wearing a GPS tracking device for prior offenses during three of the slayings and carried them out with fellow sex offender Franc Cano, 30, who is being tried separately. He has pleaded not guilty.
The men drove around randomly targeting the women, then abducted and killed them, authorities said.
During the investigation, police identified the victim at the recycling plant as 21-year-old Jarrae Nykkole Estepp from the tattoo on the back of her neck. They searched a database of sex offenders wearing tracking devices and found Cano had been in the locations of all four women when they vanished.
They focused on Gordon after a search of Cano's cellphone showed that the men texted constantly. The night Estepp died, a message from Gordon's phone to Cano's read, "This is the best one yet."
DNA samples from Estepp's body matched Cano's and Gordon's genetic material, authorities said.
They were charged with the deaths of Estepp and three women who went missing in Santa Ana- Kianna Jackson, 20, Josephine Monique Vargas, 34 and Martha Anaya, 28.
Cano and Gordon were registered sex offenders after being convicted in separate cases of lewd and lascivious acts with a child under 14. Gordon was convicted in 1992 and also has a 2002 kidnapping conviction, while Cano's conviction dates to 2008.
Police believe the defendants knew each other since at least 2010, when Cano cut off his GPS device and fled to Alabama, where he was arrested with Gordon.
Two years later, they again cut off their monitoring devices and boarded a Greyhound bus to Las Vegas using fake names. They were arrested two weeks later by federal agents.
New York
4 sentenced in kidnapping and torture of students
ROCHESTER, N.Y. (AP) - Four people convicted of charges stemming from the kidnapping and torture of two New York college students have been sentenced to prison.
The two men and two women were convicted last month of kidnapping two male University of Rochester students in December 2015.
Prosecutors say the victims, who were abused during a 40-hour ordeal, were mistakenly targeted for retribution for a drug-related robbery.
Lydell Strickland was sentenced Wednesday to 25 years to life. David Alcaraz-Ubiles was sentenced to 15 years to run consecutively with a 15-year sentence he's serving for another crime.
Inalia Rolldan and Ruth Lora were sentenced to seven years in prison and five years of post-release supervision.
Five others charged in the case have taken plea deals.
Massachusetts
Woman charged in baby deaths wants evidence from home tossed
WORCESTER, Mass. (AP) - The lawyer for a Massachusetts woman facing murder charges after the bodies of three infants were found in her squalid home has asked a judge to throw out evidence police found during a search of the house.
Erika Murray is charged in the deaths of two of three dead babies found in her Blackstone home in September 2014.
The Telegram & Gazette reports that her attorney, Keith Halpern, told a judge Wednesday that a police search of the home exceeded the scope of the search warrant, which he called "vague, overbroad and fatally defective."
Prosecutors countered that given the "bizarre and unusual" facts of the case, the search was justified.
The judge did not immediately rule.
Murray is being held without bail after pleading not guilty.
Published: Fri, Dec 23, 2016
