Washington
Judge dismisses murder charges in death of teenager
EVERETT, Wash. (AP) — A Snohomish County Superior Court judge on Monday dismissed murder charges for the second time in the killing of a Bothell teenager after concluding that Alan Edward Dean may never be mentally competent to stand trial.
Breakthroughs in forensic genealogy led to Dean’s arrest in July 2020. A used cigarette butt linked him to the killing of Melissa Lee, who was 15 when she died in April 1993, the Everett Herald reported.
At court appearances after prosecutors charged him with first-degree murder in 2020, Dean rambled incoherently and refused to identify himself. After he refused to cooperate at another hearing, a judge ordered Dean undergo a mental health evaluation.
Finding Dean didn’t have the capacity to understand the nature of the proceedings against him or to help in his defense, judges twice ordered competency restoration treatment at a state psychiatric hospital.
After doctors argued Dean was unlikely to regain competency, Judge Richard Okrent dismissed the case in 2021 and indefinitely committed Dean to the hospital.
In January, Western State Hospital doctors called Dean “gravely disabled” and said he was ready for a “less restrictive alternative placement,” like an adult family home. The petition was approved in January. Prosecutors refiled criminal charges this month.
New York
NYPD accused of collecting DNA for ‘rogue’ database
NEW YORK (AP) — The Legal Aid Society has filed a federal lawsuit accusing the New York Police Department of surreptitiously collecting genetic material from thousands of New Yorkers and storing it indefinitely in a “rogue” DNA database.
According to the lawsuit filed in federal court in Manhattan on Monday, the police routinely offer people who are being questioned about a crime a beverage, a cigarette or chewing gum and then collect DNA from the items.
The genetic material is stored and cataloged in a “suspect index” that puts people’s DNA profiles through “a genetic lineup that compares the profiles against all past and future crime scene DNA evidence — all without obtaining a warrant or court order to conduct these DNA searches,” the lawsuit says.
“Thousands of New Yorkers, most of whom are Black and brown, and many of whom have never been convicted of any crime, are illegally in the city’s rogue DNA database, which treats people as suspects in every crime involving DNA,” Phil Desgranges, the Legal Aid Society’s supervising attorney in the special litigation unit of the criminal defense practice, said in a news release.
The class action lawsuit was filed by two Legal Aid clients who say their DNA was collected without their consent. It names New York City, several top police officials and the city’s chief medical examiner as defendants.
Nicholas Paolucci, a spokesperson for the city law department, said Tuesday that the department would review the lawsuit.
“The local DNA database complies with all applicable laws and is managed and used in accordance with the highest scientific standards set by independent accrediting bodies that have regularly reapproved the existence of the database,” the chief medical officer’s office said in a statement.
Nebraska
Man convicted of killing police investigator
COLUMBUS, Neb. (AP) — A young man has been found guilty of first-degree murder in the 2020 shooting death of a Lincoln police investigator who was among officers serving an arrest warrant in a homicide case.
A jury returned guilty verdicts Monday on the murder count as well as assault, escape and several weapons counts against 19-year-old Felipe Vazquez, the Lincoln Journal Star reported. He faces a mandatory prison term of life, plus 194 years, when he’s sentenced May 25 for the death of investigator Luis “Mario” Herrera.
Herrera was a 23-year-veteran of the Lincoln police department and was among several officers who went to Vazquez’s home on Aug. 26, 2020, to serve an arrest warrant for the then-17-year-old Vazquez in the stabbing death of 36-year-old Edward Varejcka months earlier.
Prosecutors said Vazquez shot at officers as he and another man tried to escape the home.
Herrera was wearing plain clothes and was without a bulletproof vest. He was there, in part, as a translator. He was struck in the torso and underwent several surgeries before dying on Sept. 7, 2020.
Herrera was the first Lincoln police officer killed in the line of duty in more than 50 years, and the seventh in the city’s history.
Vazquez’s trial was held in Columbus after a judge determined he likely could not get a fair trial in the Lincoln area and moved the venue to Platte County in eastern Nebraska.
Texas
Man pleads guilty in 2 slayings, string of rapes
FORT WORTH, Texas (AP) — A man who pleaded guilty to killing two women and committing a string of rapes in Texas has been sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, prosecutors said.
Reginald Kimbro, 28, pleaded guilty Friday in Fort Worth to two counts of capital murder in the deaths of two women who were raped and strangled. Kimbro was sentenced in each case to life in prison without the possibility of parole. He also pleaded guilty Friday to raping four other women, the Tarrant County district attorney’s office said.
His jury trial had been set to start Tuesday.
“He used his personality and charm to attract women or drugged them when that did not work,” Assistant Tarrant County Criminal District Attorney Allenna Bangs said in a news release.
One of Kimbro’s victims, Molly Jane Matheson, 22, was killed on April 9, 2017, and her body was found the next day at her Fort Worth home, prosecutors said.
Kimbro, who’d previously dated Matheson when they both attended the University of Arkansas, was linked to the slaying through evidence including DNA and cellphone records, prosecutors said.
Prosecutors said that as police were investigating Kimbro, he raped and strangled 36-year-old Megan Getrum, a stranger to him, on April 14, 2017, as she hiked through a nature preserve near her home in the Dallas suburb of Plano. Getrum’s body was found days later in a Dallas-area lake.
Kimbro also pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting three women in Collin County, located just north of Dallas, and a woman in South Texas’ Cameron County. Kimbro received sentences of 20 years for each rape in Collin County and life in prison for the Cameron County case.
California
Ex-police officer pleads in child pornography case
LOS ANGELES (AP) — A former Long Beach police officer pleaded guilty Monday to distributing child pornography, including while on duty.
Anthony Brown, 57, of Lakewood, entered the plea to a single federal count.
In his plea agreement, Brown acknowledged using his mobile phone to log into the internet-based messaging application MeWe to distribute sexually explicit images of underage girls in November 2019, March 2020 and April 2020, the U.S. attorney’s office said in a statement.
Brown also possessed an image of a girl who appeared to be 11 or 12 years old, prosecutors said.
Brown, a 27-year veteran of the Police Department, left the force last year after his arrest on state charges of possessing an distributing child pornography, prosecutors said.
The Los Angeles County district attorney’s office later dismissed the charges because of the federal case, the U.S. attorney’s office said.
Brown could face five years up to 20 years in prison when he is sentenced in July.
Rhode Island
State reaches settlement with 2 drug manufacturers
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — Settlements with drug manufacturers Teva and Allergan announced Monday by Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha mark an end to the state’s principal opioid litigation, bringing the total received by the state from a series of cash settlements to nearly $190 million.
Under the deal, Teva and Allergan have agreed to deliver $28.5 million and a million free doses of naloxone to Rhode Island over the next 10 years. Naloxone is a drug that reverses overdoses.
Rhode Island will also receive 67,000 30-pill bottles of the treatment drug Suboxone in various doses over the next 10 years at no cost. The agreements resolve claims brought by the state for the companies’ roles in helping to fuel the opioid epidemic, according to Neronha.
“While no amount of money will ever be enough to undo the harm suffered by Rhode Islanders throughout the ongoing opioid epidemic, these additional recoveries will further support public health efforts to respond to the challenges brought on by this epidemic,” Neronha said in a written statement.
In a written statement, Teva Pharmaceuticals said it believes Monday’s settlement with the state of Rhode Island is in the best interest of those impacted by the opioid crisis and a critical step forward in getting life-saving treatments to the people who need them.
“This settlement agreement is not an admission of any liability or wrongdoing and the company will continue to defend itself in court, in states where we have not reached terms of a settlement agreement,” the statement added.
The opioid epidemic has been linked to more than 500,000 deaths in the U.S. over the past two decades, counting those from prescription painkillers such as OxyContin and generic oxycodone as well as illicit drugs such as heroin and illegally produced fentanyl.
In the 2010s, state and local governments filed thousands of lawsuits against companies that make and distribute the drugs seeking to hold them accountable. A handful of cases have gone to trial, but many more have been settling, particularly over the last year.
OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma has a tentative nationwide deal that includes $6 billion in cash from members of the Sackler family who own the company; Drugmaker Johnson & Johnson and the distributors AmerisourceBergen, Cardinal Health and McKesson have finalized settlements totaling $26 billion.
Other drugmakers, including Teva and Endo, have been settling state-by-state. Just last month, for instance, Teva reached a deal with Texas to provide $150 million in cash plus naloxone worth $15 million.
In all, settlements over the past several years have totaled over $45 billion, according to an Associated Press tally.
Maine
Man convicted in parking lot killing sentenced
AUBURN, Maine (AP) — A Maine man who pleaded guilty to manslaughter in the death of a Massachusetts resident in an Auburn fast-food parking lot was sentenced to 25 years in prison Monday.
Police initially charged Trai Larue, of Lewiston, with murder stemming from 21-year-old Roger Cornell’s 2020 death. Cornell, of New Bedford, was found injured in the parking lot and later died at a hospital.
Larue was sentenced in Androscoggin County. Some of his sentence will be suspended, WCSH-TV reported.
