National Roundup

Wisconsin
Judge sentences attorneys for defrauding ­Johnson ­Controls
MADISON, Wis. (AP) — A federal judge has sentenced two attorneys for defrauding Johnson Controls out of $4.5 million.

U.S. District Judge J.P. Stadtmueller sentenced 54-year-old Scott Hess of Menomonee Falls to 32 months in prison on June 15.

The judge sentenced 55-year-old Craig Hilborn of Birmingham, Michigan, to 21 months in prison on Thursday. Both pleaded guilty to two counts of wire fraud earlier this year.

According to prosecutors, Hess worked as a Johnson Controls in-house attorney in Milwaukee until late 2015. Hilborn ran his own law firm in Michigan.

Hess created fake invoices that caused Johnson Controls to pay Hilborn’s firm for legal work that the firm never performed. The two carried out the scheme for 15 years, from 2000 until 2015, stealing about $4.5 million from the company.

Mississippi
U.S. Supreme Court rejects 2 separate death row appeals
JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday rejected appeals from two Mississippi death row inmates.

However, a spokeswoman for the state attorney general’s office, Margaret Ann Morgan, said Richard Gerald Jordan and Timothy Nelson Evans have additional appeals remaining. Neither has an execution date, and “neither is cleared for execution,” by the Supreme Court decision, Morgan said.

Jordan , now 72, has been on death row longer than any Mississippi inmate. He was sentenced to death in 1976 for the kidnapping and killing of Edwina Marter earlier that year in Harrison County.

Mississippi Supreme Court records show Jordan traveled from Louisiana to Gulfport, Mississippi, where he called Gulf National Bank and asked to speak to a loan officer.

After he was told Charles Marter could speak with him, Jordan ended the call, looked up Marter’s home address in a telephone book, went to the house and got in by pretending to work for the electric company.

Records show Jordan kidnapped Edwina Marter, took her to a forest and shot her, then later called her husband and demanded $25,000, saying she was safe.

Jordan is among the inmates challenging Mississippi’s lethal injection procedure, with a federal trial set for Aug. 27.

Evans , now 61, was convicted in 2013 for the 2010 killing of Wenda Holling in Hancock County. Court records show Evans had previously been romantically involved with Holling but was living in her home as a tenant when he strangled her. Investigators found Evans used Holling’s credit card after her death.

Mississippi’s last execution was in June 2012.

In a dissent Thursday, Justice Stephen Breyer wrote that the cases of Jordan and Evans illustrate what he had previously written in other death penalty cases — that the death penalty, as applied in the U.S. today, involves “unconscionably long delays, arbitrary application and serious unreliability.”

Breyer wrote that the Supreme Court should consider an argument made by Jordan, that execution after decades on death row violates the Constitution’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

Breyer also wrote that Jordan and Nelson were both sentenced to death from the 2nd Circuit Court District, and that Evans’ attorneys said the district on the Gulf Coast accounts for “the largest number of death sentences” among Mississippi’s 22 circuit court districts since 1976.

Breyer said that shows the arbitrary application of the death penalty.

Jordan’s attorney, Jim Craig, said it’s notable that Breyer analyzed the Mississippi cases and found “evidence for the abolition of the death penalty.”


Connecticut
Court won’t ­create special Miranda warning for juveniles
HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — Connecticut’s Supreme Court has declined to set up new rules for police who question juveniles suspected of crimes that could be transferred to adult court.

The 5-1 ruling released Thursday comes in the case of a 16-year-old from Torrington who was charged in 2012 with attempting to rob several middle school students and later convicted in adult court.

Richard Emanuel, an attorney for William Castillo, argued that his client thought his statement would only be used in juvenile proceedings.

He argued police should have told him that the case could be transferred to adult court, where his words also could be used against him.

Castillo eventually served an 18-month prison sentence.

Emanuel argued that over the years an “unknown number” of other juvenile suspects “may have been misled about the potential ‘adult’ consequences of giving a statement to the police, and others similarly could be misled in the future.”

He asked the Supreme Court to use its authority to create a rule that would require that police inform juvenile suspects of those consequences before they begin questioning.

But the high court ruled that Castillo, who spoke to police at his home with his mother present, was not in custody at the time he gave his statement and was not entitled to be read his rights.

They also declined to set up any new rule.

“The defendant does not offer any evidence that there is a pervasive and significant problem that would justify the invocation of our supervisory authority,” Justice Maria Araujo Kahn wrote for the majority. “Instead, the defendant merely offers broad assertions and speculation.”

Justice Gregory D’Auria, in dissenting from the decision, wrote that is hard enough even for adults to understand their rights and what they are giving up when they waive those rights.

Emanuel said Thursday he hopes the legislature will change the law and require police to better inform children and their parents of their rights.

He pointed to the 1996 case of Robin Ledbetter, 14-year old Hartford girl who ended up being convicted of felony murder and sentenced to 50 years in prison after her father convinced her to give an incriminating statement to police about her role in the killing of a cab driver.

The father, Emanuel said, believed his daughter could not be incarcerated beyond her 18th birthday.

“I believe that in the absence of a warning, juveniles and their parents are being misled or deceived or duped about their legal rights and the consequences of giving up those rights,” he said.