National Roundup

Ohio
Woman pleads not guilty in death of baby
OREGON, Ohio (AP) — An Ohio woman has pleaded not guilty in the death of her boyfriend’s 6-month-old child.

Angie Walker, of Toledo, was arraigned Monday on murder and child endangering charges. A judge ordered that she remain in jail on $500,000 bond.

She was arrested Friday in the Toledo suburb of Oregon.

Court records don’t indicate if she has an attorney and say she plans to hire a private attorney.

The Blade reports that emergency crews responded to a home Tuesday morning and found the child, Levi Ashley, unconscious. Police say Walker was caring for the baby and that neither her boyfriend nor Levi’s mother was there at the time.

The newspaper reports that the child was taken off life support last Wednesday.

Maine
Court officer who photographed defense lawyer’s notes resigns
AUGUSTA, Maine (AP) — A Maine court security officer who sent a cellphone photo of a defense attorney’s notes to a prosecutor has resigned.

The Kennebec Journal reports Kennebec County officials said Joe Eldridge submitted his resignation Monday. Authorities say the officer quit at the end of the internal investigation into his conduct in April.

Eldridge took a photo of defense attorney Sherry Tash’s notes while she and others talked to a judge in his chambers. Assistant District Attorney Francis Griffin reported Eldridge after receiving the photo in an email.

The case involved robbery, aggravated assault and criminal mischief.

District Attorney Meaghan Maloney says the information Eldridge sent wasn’t anything helpful.

Officials say Eldridge’s actions were a serious ethical breach.

Pennsylvania
Cops better on stop-and-frisk
PHILADELPHIA (AP) — A new report finds the Philadelphia Police Department’s stop-and-frisk practices are improving, but also shows officers are still stopping thousands of people without a legal reason.

The court-ordered report is part of a monitoring process ordered in a 2011 consent decree. Civil rights lawyers filed the report Tuesday in federal court.

The report shows a 35 percent decrease in pedestrian stops in 2016, but officers still stopped roughly 140,000 people.

Over 77 percent of stops in 2016 were of blacks or Latinos. A later report will analyze the racial disparities in the data.

Officers gave a legal reason for 75 percent of the stops in 2016, meaning 35,000 people were stopped illegally in the city last year.

Pennsylvania
Court rules that pencil used to stab student wasn’t a weapon
PITTSBURGH (AP) — A Pennsylvania appeals court says a 14-year-old girl who stabbed a boy in the neck with a pencil at their high school won’t have her suspension on her permanent record because the pencil wasn’t a “weapon” under the school’s conduct code.

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports Monday’s Commonwealth Court ruling upholds a lower court’s finding.

Pittsburgh Public Schools officials suspended the 10th-grader for the attack last May at Barack Obama International Academy. The injured boy was treated for minor wounds.

The girl and her father sought a less severe punishment, saying the sole reason for the harsh discipline was the district treating the situation as “possession of a ‘weapon’ ... rather than responding to the actual misbehavior.”

Massachusetts
Woman charged with stealing money from  blind man, 83
UXBRIDGE, Mass. (AP) — A Massachusetts woman has been charged with stealing nearly $200,000 from an 83-year-old legally blind man she was hired to help.
The Telegram & Gazette reports that 61-year-old Gloria Morvan was released on personal recognizance after pleading not guilty to larceny from a person over 65.
According to court documents, Morvan worked as a part-time caretaker for the man, who paid her in cash to help him with tasks including writing checks for bills.
The man told police he became suspicious of Morvan so he asked someone else to look at his bank statements. He found a $195,000 check had been made out to Morvan.
Police say Morvan used the money to buy a condominium in the Whitinsville section of Northbridge.
She told police the money was a gift.

Tennessee
Widow faces third trial in 2003 death
of husband
KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Jury selection is underway in the third trial of a woman accused of killing her husband and staging his death to look like a suicide.
Potential jurors reported Monday in the trial of 68-year-old Raynella Dossett Leath. The Knoxville News Sentinel reports she is charged in the 2003 shooting death of David Leath.
She was indicted in 2006, and a mistrial was declared in 2009 after the jury deadlocked. She was convicted in a 2010 retrial and sentenced to between 51 years and life in prison. She won a new trial last year after an investigation found that Knox County Criminal Court Judge Richard Baumgartner used drugs during her trial.
In 2008, Leath was indicted by a grand jury on charges of killing her first husband, prosecutor Ed Dossett, 16 years after his body was found trampled by cattle in 1992. Charges in that case were later dropped.

South Carolina
Researcher gets prison for fraud
CHARLESTON, S.C. (AP) — A medical researcher in South Carolina has been sentenced to prison for misusing millions of federal grant funds.
The Post and Courier of Charleston reported that former Mount Pleasant resident Dr. Jian-Yun Dong was sentenced to nearly six years in prison Monday.
Dong founded GenPhar Inc. and Vaxima Inc., and was accused of misusing more than $3 million in grants that was supposed to go for vaccine research.
U.S. District Judge David Norton found Dong guilty in 2015 on dozens of federal charges related to fraud, theft and lying to investigators.
Prosecutors say he used the money to help build an office building and visit his mistress in China.
Dong had contended his spending bolstered his work for the military to come up with vaccines for the Ebola virus.