Court Digest

Florida
Teacher gets 15 years for making videos of girls changing clothes
TAMPA, Fla. (AP) — A 52-year-old teacher was sentenced to 15 years in prison for secretly recording videos of students as they changed clothes in his fashion design classroom at a Florida high school.
Mark William Ackett also must remain a registered sex offender for the rest of his life.

“There’s so much suffering in this case by so many different people due to the actions of the defendant. There’s very little I can say today to make any of that better,” Hillsborough County Judge Laura Ward said at his sentencing on Monday.

Ackett occasionally met the gaze of former students attending the hearing in a Tampa courtroom. He later read an apology in a clear, steady voice, the Tampa Bay Times reported. During the two-hour hearing he bowed his head as friends, neighbors and his wife of nearly 30 years begged for leniency.

But prosecutors pointed out that the 324 counts of video voyeurism Ackett pleaded guilty to in April call for roughly 366 years in prison, the newspaper reported.

Defense attorneys had asked for no more than three years, plus probation, promising that Ackett would continue seeking treatment for a diagnosed “voyeuristic disorder.”

Ackett sobbed as his victims spoke to the judge.

Eva Applebee, a longtime Bloomingdale High School teacher, spoke of the shock and disbelief she felt when she learned she was the only adult in the videos.

Prosecutors said Ackett, after returning to Bloomingdale as the girl’s track coach and fashion design teacher in 2017, collected, cropped and edited hundreds of nude and partially-nude videos and photos of 125 victims changing in the fashion design class dressing room.

Applebee told the court it felt like she had been punched in the stomach when she learned that his cameras were in the classroom they shared. The students now call the classroom the “room of horrors,” she said.

“What Mark did was not an isolated lapse of judgement but calculated and deliberate criminal acts,” Applebee said. “Mark groomed and chose his victims - gaining their trust and then taking advantage of them.”

A parent whose daughter was 15 when she was recorded changing clothes told the judge she can’t trust the school system any more.

“I can’t trust the teachers or the coaches, I can’t trust anyone anymore,” she said.

Several students said they struggle with depression and anxiety. Another went from being a standout on the girl’s track team to quitting completely. One victim told the judge she spent her father’s birthday sitting with investigators and identifying pictures of her naked body.

Those who came to court to speak on behalf of Ackett described him as a good neighbor, a good coach, a volunteer for his kids’ marching band, a trusted Sunday school teacher and a loving husband, the Times reported.

“I wish I could go back and change what I did, or do something to make amends but I know that I cannot,” Ackett said to the court. “I feel especially ashamed of what I did because you treated me with such care. Some of you confided in me your fears and problems, and many of you consider my classroom a safe place to escape the problems that you face. I will never forgive myself for turning something that should have been a fond memory for you into something that you would rather forget.”

Prosecutors said Ackett was caught when a 17-year-old student noticed a box on a shelf with a light coming from it as she changed clothes. Inside it, she found a cellphone that appeared to be recording. She told the school’s principal who called the sheriff’s office.

“He is an excellent actor, having fooled us and his very own family for years,” Applebee said. “Acting like he cared, like he respected us. But instead we found out it was a big act.”

New York
Investigator in wrongful conviction case facing charges
MINEOLA, N.Y. (AP) — An investigator whose work helped lead to the exoneration of a man convicted of killing his parents was indicted Monday on charges including attempted grand larceny, with authorities saying he tried to extort his former client over a three-year period.

Nassau County District Attorney Madeline Singas’ office said Jay Salpeter, 69, of Glen Cove, New York, sent numerous emails and voicemails to Martin Tankleff between 2018 and 2021, threatening him and trying to get money he thought he was owed.

Salpeter pleaded not guilty to the charges at a court appearance on Monday. His next court date is June 7.

Tankleff had spent 17 years in prison after being convicted in the 1988 deaths of his parents. The conviction was overturned in 2007 and Tankleff was awarded a $10 million settlement in 2018 following a federal court lawsuit.

His attorney, Thomas Liotti, said Salpeter’s actions “never rose to the level of an actual threat” to Tankleff.

South Dakota
Appeals court throws out evidence in health care fraud case
RAPID CITY, S.D. (AP) — A federal appeals court says a Pennington County deputy violated the Fourth Amendment when he seized empty drug vials from a paramedic based on nothing more than a hunch that they might be illegal.

The ruling means that federal prosecutors in Rapid City can’t use the vials as evidence in their case against Dane Arredondo, a former Oglala Sioux Tribe ambulance service worker.

The vials were labeled as containing two painkillers, fentanyl and ketamine, according to officials. Arredondo has pleaded not guilty to health care fraud, acquiring controlled substances by fraud and possession of controlled substances.

Prosecutors allege Arredondo took the drugs from his workplace in January 2019.

“For an item’s ‘incriminating character’ to be ‘immediately apparent,’ the officer must have probable cause to associate it with criminal activity,” wrote Judges Ralph Erickson and Jonathan Kobes of the Eight Circuit Court of Appeals in a decision released Monday. Deputy Eric Fenton “possessed no such probable cause,” they said.

Fenton seized the vials at Arredondo’s Rapid Valley home after the deputy responded to a domestic disturbance call.

Judge Raymond Gruender disagreed with his colleagues about the seizure, the  Rapid City Journal reported.

The ruling “ignores the totality of the circumstances” in failing to see that “several factors gave Deputy Fenton probable cause to associate the glass vials with criminal activity,” he wrote in his dissent.

Georgia
Judge faces ethics charges in assault on man after hearing
KNOXVILLE, Ga. (AP) — A Georgia judge accused of assaulting an inmate who he said repeatedly cursed at him during a hearing is now facing ethics charges, according to a state judicial agency.

The Georgia Judicial Qualifications Commission’s investigative panel alleges Crawford County Chief Magistrate Cary Hays III followed the inmate into a hallway after a December 2020 first appearance hearing, then grabbed him and pushed him against a wall while the man was handcuffed and restrained at his feet.

The inmate was not identified.

Hays, who was sworn into office in 2017, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Monday that he did not injure the inmate “in any way.”

“The inmate continued to curse me over and over and over and over again,” the newspaper quoted the judge as saying. “At some point, I’d just heard enough of it.”

The man began cursing at Hays when the judge set his bond, according to the complaint, which also said the encounter was captured on security camera video.

The complaint noted that the Georgia Bureau of Investigation had an ongoing criminal investigation against Hays.

The commission’s hearing panel is set to review the case and decide whether to recommend punishment to the Georgia Supreme Court. That court could then decide to reprimand or remove Hays from office.


Missouri
Prosecutors: Man wrongly convicted of triple murder
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — Prosecutors called for the release of a Missouri man who has spent more than 40 years in prison for a triple murder that the prosecutors concluded he didn’t commit, a letter released Monday showed.

The release of the letter, indicating overwhelming support for the release of Kevin Strickland, 62, came after his attorneys filed a petition urging the Missouri Supreme Court to free him immediately, The Kansas City Star reports. In the letter, Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker and her chief deputy, Dan Nelson, said the evidence used to convict Strickland as a teenager has since been “eviscerated.”

Federal prosecutors in the Western District of Missouri, Jackson County’s presiding judge, Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas and members of the team that convicted Strickland four decades ago also now all agree that he deserves to be exonerated.

“This is a profound error we must correct now,” Baker said in the letter.

Strickland remains at the Western Missouri Correctional Center in Cameron. If he is exonerated, he will have suffered the longest wrongful imprisonment known in Missouri history.

Strickland, of Kansas City, was 18 when he was arrested, and prosecutors say the case was “thin from its inception,” resting almost entirely on the dubious identification of a traumatized shooting victim.
Prosecutors said they wouldn’t charge Strickland with any crimes if the same case was before them today.

The Star reported in investigation published in September that for decades, two men who pleaded guilty in the killings swore Strickland was not with them and two other accomplices during the April 25, 1978, killings.

The testimony of Cynthia Douglas, the only eyewitness to the murders who herself was shot, was crucial. However, she later said detectives pressured her into identifying him, The Star reported. She tried to recant for years before dying in 2015.

Prosecutors at trial claimed Strickland carried a shotgun during the murders and elicited testimony that no fingerprints on the weapon could be compared. But new forensic testing done this year shows one fingerprint found on the gun is not Strickland’s.

The Jackson County Prosecutor’s Office began reviewing Strickland’s conviction in November after speaking with his lawyers and reviewing The Star’s investigation. Strickland’s case was the first tied to the murders to go to court.

The killings occurred when a group of assailants ransacked a Kansas City home. Larry Ingram, 21; Douglas’ boyfriend, John Walker, 20; and Douglas’ best friend, Sherrie Black, 22, were each fatally shot.
Douglas was wounded but pretended to be dead.

Tennessee
Wrongful death lawsuit filed over fatal shooting by sheriff’s deputy
CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. (AP) — The mother of a Tennessee man who was fatally shot by a sheriff’s deputy last year has filed a wrongful death lawsuit.

Deborah Lilly filed suit against Hamilton County government and Deputy Jordan Long-Ross and is asking for $10 million in punitive damages and $10 million in compensatory damages, news outlets reported.

Long-Ross fatally shot Tyler Hays, 29, during an early morning traffic stop in Sale Creek. At the time, the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation said Hays fled on foot after being pulled over and then got into an altercation with the deputy that led to the shooting.

A few weeks later, Hamilton County District Attorney Neal Pinkston ruled the shooting justified and said “there is no evidence of criminal liability by the deputy.”

Lilly said autopsy results show her son was shot in the back.

“Even if Tyler and him were struggling, my question is how did my son end up being shot in the back? He was no longer a threat if he was running away.” she told WTVC-TV.

“Hamilton County has used things to try to justify the shooting, and they just don’t fly with us,” said Lilly.

WTVC said the Hamilton County Sheriff’s Office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.


Alabama
Trooper arrested on sexual misconduct charge
HUNTSVILLE, Ala. (AP) — A veteran state trooper indicted on sexual misconduct and assault charges has been placed on leave, authorities said.

Trooper William J. Fox, 47, of Meridianville was indicted by Madison County grand jurors and surrendered to Huntsville police on Monday.

The state attorney general’s office said Fox was indicted on May 4 but did not release any details about the charges.

Court records were not available Tuesday to show whether Fox had an attorney who could speak on his behalf.

Fox was honored by Central Alabama Crimestoppers as one of its officers of the year for 2019. He previously worked for the Madison Police Department near Huntsville but has been with the state for about 14 years, according to his LinkedIn profile.