Court Digest

Clare
Prosecutor: Woman charged with killing 4 had other targets
CLARE, Mich. (AP) — A woman was charged Friday with killing her father, sister and two handymen in mid-Michigan, two days after bodies were found in a rural county.

Judy Boyer had a journal with names of other people whom she wanted to kill, Clare County Prosecutor Michelle Ambrozaitis told a judge.

“Clearly, the public is still at danger should she be released on bond,” said Ambrozaitis, who didn’t disclose a motive for the four deaths.

Bond was set at $1 million. A not-guilty plea was entered on Boyer’s behalf after she didn’t respond when Judge Joshua Farrell asked if she understood the murder charges, MLive.com reported.

Her lawyers said she understood her rights.

The victims were Henry Boyer, 85, daughter Patricia Boyer, 61, Zachary Salminen, 36, and Wade Bacon, 39. All were shot Wednesday at the Boyer home in Grant Township.

Bacon and Salminen were there to work on the roof, the prosecutor said.

Bacon was “helping an elderly man with household fixes before winter settled in,” sister Wrae Bacon said on a GoFundMe page. He “died doing what he always did: helping others.”

Judy Boyer, 54, lived across the street. A nephew was charged with being an accessory after the shootings.

Clare is about 160 miles (257 kilometers) northwest of Detroit.

Kansas
Woman pleads guilty to soliciting Lansing inmate’s murder
LEAVENWORTH, Kan. (AP) — A 44-year-old Kansas City woman has admitted that she had a role in the attempted murder of an inmate at the Lansing Correctional Facility.

Renee Johnson-Fritz, of Kansas City, Missouri, pleaded Friday to solicitation of capital murder. She was scheduled to go to trial this week.

Prosecutors said her husband, Frederick Fritz, who is a state prison inmate, sent his wife a letter demanding the inmate’s death and she forwarded it to another inmate at Lansing.

Witnesses at a preliminary hearing in March said Frederick Fritz is a leader in the Aryan Brother­hood of Kansas, the Leavenworth Times reported.

The targeted inmate was attacked in April 2019 but survived.

Frederick Fritz is also charged with solicitation of capital murder. He is scheduled to go to trial in April.

Andrew Hogue, the inmate who attacked the victim, is charged with attempted capital murder. His trial is also scheduled for April.

Sentencing for Johnson-Fritz is scheduled for Dec. 1. She remains in custody at the Leavenworth County Jail.

Colorado
Day care owner gets 6 years for hiding 26 kids in basement
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (AP) — A Colorado day care owner convicted of keeping 26 children hidden in the basement of her business two years ago has been sentenced to six years in prison after parents said some of the children suffered trauma including sleeping problems and anxiety.

A judge issued the sentence to Carla Faith on Thursday following her conviction by a jury in August of more than two dozen misdemeanor child abuse charges and other crimes.

Faith was only licensed to care for up to six children at her Colorado Springs private day care and only two of them were allowed to be under the age of 2.

But police who went to her Mountain Play Place day care in November 2019 after receiving reports there were more children than allowed found 25 children in the basement, including 12 children under age 2, prosecutors said.

There were two adult employees supervising them in the basement and one of them, Valerie Fresquez, accepted a plea deal and testified at Faith’s trial, KRDO-TV reported.  The 26th child who had been in the basement was picked up by a parent while police were at the day care, authorities said.

Many of the children had soiled or wet diapers and were sweaty and thirsty, according to an arrest affidavit.

When police arrived, Faith repeatedly told an officer that no children were there and that the home did not have a basement, but the officer heard children’s music and a child’s cry from the basement, the affidavit said.

Another officer discovered a false wall and moved it to reveal the basement staircase, the affidavit said.

At Faith’s sentencing on Thursday, parents of the children and relatives filled the courtroom, telling the judge that their children have suffered trauma since being at the day care, citing sleep and anxiety issues, KOAA-TV reported.
Parent Kim Marshall said that both of her children still receive counseling.

“We sleep with the lights on in our house,” she said. “My kids are anxious. They are fearful of the world.”

Faith’s lawyer, Josh Tolini, said she had difficulty saying to “no” to parents who wanted to place their children at her day care and that the situation snowballed.

She made some “incredibly poor decisions about how to do this,” Tolini said.

Faith was convicted of 26 counts of misdemeanor child abuse, attempting to influence a public servant and obstructing a peace officer.

KRDO-TV reported that charges against Fresquez will be dropped if she meets some unspecified steps.

Day care employee Christina Swauger was convicted of the same charges as Faith and is awaiting sentencing.

An arrest warrant has been issued for another former day care employee who failed to appear in court, said Howard Black, a spokesperson for the 4th Judicial District Attorney’s Office in Colorado.

Wisconsin
Ex-teacher gets 12 years for secret videotapes
MADISON, Wis. (AP) — A former Wisconsin high school teacher accused of secretly videotaping undressed students during field trips was sentenced Friday to 12 years in prison after reaching a plea deal with federal prosecutors.
David Kruchten, 39, of Cottage Grove, Wisconsin, earlier pleaded guilty  to one count of attempting to produce child pornography.

Prosecutors alleged Kruchten used his position as a business teacher at Madison East High School to secretly videotape students during field trips in Wisconsin and Minnesota.

According to court documents, he accompanied East High’s business club students on overnight trips to Wisconsin Dells and Lake Geneva as well as Minneapolis in 2019. Students discovered hidden cameras planted in air fresheners in their hotel rooms during the Minneapolis trip. Investigators discovered similar air freshener cans in photos taken by students during the Wisconsin trips, prosecutors said.

Kruchten was charged last year with multiple counts of attempting to produce child pornography and resigned from his teaching job.

In an eight-page handwritten letter filed earlier this week in U.S. District Court, Kruchten wrote that he started spying on family “to deal with stress and fulfill a need for adrenaline” and to find out what they said about him when he wasn’t around, the Wisconsin State Journal reported.

That led to planting hidden cameras to capture pets, family, friends, babysitters and even his parents and grandparents, before he began spying on his students, Kruchten wrote in the letter to U.S. District Judge James Peterson.

“That was not my goal when I went into teaching and it was not my goal when I started on this course of behavior,” Kruchten wrote. “My goal was not a collection of child pornography. My interest in these voyeuristic videos was not to capture students engaged in sex acts, my interest was the same (as) it was with my grandparents, and my pets and my wife — to see what people do when I’m not there.”

However, he wrote, it would be a lie to say there was “zero sexual component.”

Peterson also sentenced Kruchten to 20 years of supervised release to follow his time in prison.

South Carolina
Widow sues county over husband’s ketamine injection
MOUNT PLEASANT, S.C. (AP) — A widow is suing a South Carolina county two years after her husband died following a ketamine injection he received during an arrest.

The complaint filed by Tabitha Eileen Britt earlier this month says the two Charleston County paramedics who injected her husband, James Britt, with the sedative drug  after he was handcuffed by Mount Pleasant police in 2019 weren’t authorized to do so under state law.

The Post and Courier reports  that Tabitha Britt wants a judge to stop county paramedics from using ketamine to aid law enforcement without a medical reason.

A police report stated that Mount Pleasant officers were dispatched on Sept. 30, 2019 for a man urinating on the roadway. According to the lawsuit, one officer initially stopped to help James Britt change a car tire before she said she would arrest him for public intoxication.

According to the complaint, police forced James Britt to the ground in a prone position, where he repeatedly said he couldn’t breathe.

One paramedic who arrived at the scene then injected James Britt with 500 mg of ketamine, the maximum dose under county guidelines. The suit says James Britt stopped breathing minutes later; although he was resuscitated in the ambulance, he never regained consciousness and died less than three weeks later in the hospital.

“At the end of the day, we don’t think ketamine should be used for a law enforcement purpose, end of story,” said Michael Thomas Cooper, an attorney representing Tabitha Britt.

Charleston County spokeswoman Kelsey Barlow declined to comment to the newspaper, citing pending litigation.

In September 2020, the town of Mount Pleasant settled with Tabitha Britt for $3 million over a wrongful death claim. Earlier this year, state prosecutors cleared both the police and paramedics of criminal wrongdoing in the death of James Britt.

Vermont
Judge: Law school can hide murals some find racially offensive
ROYALTON, Vt. (AP) — A federal judge has ruled that Vermont Law School can conceal two large murals that some members of the school community find racially offensive.

The Valley News reports the judge granted the school’s request to dismiss a lawsuit by the artist, ruling last week that the school’s plan to hide the murals behind a wall of acoustic tiles doesn’t violate the federal Visual Artists Rights Act. They are currently covered by drop cloths.

Lawyers for artist Samuel Kerson said he will appeal.

Kerson painted the murals entitled “Vermont, The Underground Railroad” and “Vermont and the Fugitive Slave” for the school on two walls inside a building in 1994. Last year the school said it would paint over them and, when the artist objected, said it would instead cover the murals with the tiles.

“Despite its beneficent intentions, the mural has not aged well. Its depiction of African Americans strikes some viewers as caricatured and offensive, and the mural has become a source of discord and distraction at Vermont Law School — an institution whose explicit mission it is to educate students in a diverse community,” the school said in a court filing in response Kerson’s lawsuit.

Lawyers for Kerson, who lives in Quebec, argued that the artwork is protected by the Visual Artists Rights Act that safeguards artists’ works from “distortion, mutilation, or other modification,” which would be prejudicial to their honor or reputation.

U.S. District Court Judge Geoffrey Crawford disagreed, ruling that once the wall is in place, “The murals will have the same status as a portrait or bust that is removed from public exhibition and placed in storage.”

Justin Barnard, a lawyer for the school, said they’re pleased the court agrees that the act doesn’t compel an owner to display artwork against its wishes.

In a statement, Kerson’s lawyers, Steven Hyman and Richard Rubin, said the judge ignored the clear intent of the act. Kerson declined to comment beyond the statement from his lawyers.

Connecticut
Man convicted of sex trafficking at 2020 Super Bowl
NEW HAVEN, Conn. (AP) — A jury in Florida has convicted a Connecticut man of sex trafficking at the 2020 Super Bowl in Miami.

The U.S. attorney’s office had alleged 48-year-old Edward Walker, of New Haven, brought two adult women and a 17-year-old girl from Connecticut to Miami in January 2020 to offer sex for money. Walker allegedly kept all the money the women received.

Prosecutors also offered evidence that Walker planned to take the victims to other locations, including Chicago during the NBA All-Star Game and New Orleans during Mardi Gras, to further exploit them.

After an eight-day trial, a jury in Fort Lauderdale on Wednesday convicted Walker of two counts of sex trafficking by force and coercion and one count of transporting a person for sexual activity. He faces up life in prison when he is sentenced in January.

A message was left with an attorney who represented Walker.