Texas
Man convicted of fatally shooting his 2 daughters
DALLAS (AP) — A suburban Dallas man who evaded arrest for more than 12 years after the fatal shootings of his two teenage daughters in 2008 was convicted Tuesday in the killings that prosecutors said were driven by his obsessive desire for control.
Yaser Said, 65, was found guilty of capital murder in the deaths of 18-year-old Amina Said and 17-year-old Sarah Said. Prosecutors did not pursue the death penalty, so with the conviction, the judge sentenced Yaser Said to life in prison without parole.
The teens’ mother, Patricia Owens, told her former husband in a victim impact statement given after the verdict and sentence that she was no longer scared of him.
“You can keep those evil eyes on me as long as you want. You will never break me down again,” Owens said. “Nor will you ever be able to hurt another person.”
Prosecutor Lauren Black said in closing statements that Said “manipulated and controlled that household.” She said that when Said’s daughters wanted to live their own lives, he could see that he was losing control. “He was not going to be able to deal with that, so he took their lives,” Black said.
The sisters were found shot to death in a taxi that their father had been driving that was parked near a hotel in the Dallas suburb of Irving on New Year’s Day in 2008. Jurors heard a 911 call Sarah Said made by cellphone, telling the operator that her father had shot her and that she was dying.
“She’s screaming out from the grave right now,” Black told jurors after playing the 911 call during closing statements.
Sarah Said was shot nine times and Amina Said was shot twice.
Defense attorneys, who said they would appeal the verdict, said people can have hallucinations in moments of extreme trauma, such as when they have been shot multiple times. They also said the evidence did not support a conviction, and that police were too quick to focus on Said as the suspect.
A week before they were killed, the girls and their mother had fled their home in the Dallas suburb of Lewisville and went to Oklahoma to escape Said. The sisters’ boyfriends also joined them. The prosecutor said the sisters had become “very scared for their lives,” and decided to leave after their father “put a gun to Amina’s head and threatened to kill her.”
According to a police report, a family member told investigators that Said at one point had threatened “bodily harm” against one of his daughters for dating a non-Muslim.
In a letter to the judge before the trial, Said wrote that he was not happy with his daughters’ “dating activity” but he denied killing them.
Owens, who divorced Said after the slayings, testified that Said was abusive and controlling, and had convinced her to return to Texas from Oklahoma.
Owens testified that when she married Said, she was 15 and he was 29. She told him while giving her victim impact statement that he’d “never treated me like a real person, a wife.” Instead, she said, she was just someone for him to take his anger out on.
“Remember when you put the knife to my throat? I do. Remember when you pointed a gun at me? I do,” she said.
Said took the stand on Monday, telling jurors that he did not kill his daughters. Said told jurors that the evening the sisters’ were killed, he was taking them to dinner because he wanted to “solve the problem” after they had left home. He said he thought someone was following them, so he had left his daughters in the taxi and fled. He said he did not turn himself in to authorities because he feared he would not get a fair trial.
Prosecutor Brandi Mitchell called his testimony “absurd.”
In a Dec. 21, 2007, email that was brought into evidence, Amina Said told a teacher that she and her sister planned to run away. She said they didn’t want to live by the culture of their father, who was born in Egypt. Her father, she said, had “made our lives a nightmare.”
“He will, without any drama nor doubt, kill us,” the email read.
After the slayings, Said was sought on a capital murder warrant, and was placed on the FBI’s most-wanted list. He was finally arrested in August 2020 in Justin, about 35 miles (60 kilometers) northwest of Dallas. His son, Islam Said, and his brother, Yassim Said, were subsequently convicted of helping him evade arrest.
Montana
State abortion laws remain blocked during legal challenge
HELENA, Mont. (AP) — The Montana Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld a lower court ruling that temporarily blocks three abortion laws passed by the 2021 Legislature from taking effect while legal challenges play out.
The ruling prevents the state from enforcing laws that ban abortions beyond 20 weeks, eliminate tele-health services for medication abortions and mandate that an abortion provider offer patients the opportunity to listen to the fetal heart tone or view an ultrasound 24 hours before performing an abortion.
The case, filed by Planned Parenthood of Montana, now goes back to District Court in Yellowstone County for a full trial on the merits.
The Montana Supreme Court found that District Court Judge Michael Moses of Billings was right to rely on its 1999 Armstrong decision in granting the preliminary injunction. The Armstrong decision holds that laws interfering with bodily autonomy violate the state Constitution’s right to individual privacy.
Moses granted the preliminary injunction in October 2021, finding that based on first impression the laws appeared to be unconstitutional.
The state, represented by Attorney General Austin Knudsen, appealed the injunction in January and also asked the Montana Supreme Court to overturn the Armstrong decision.
Justices said Montana’s preliminary injunction standard prohibits courts from ruling on the underlying merits of the case, so it did not consider the request to overturn Armstrong.
The purpose of a preliminary injunction is to maintain the status quo pending trial, not to rule on the merits of the entire case, the ruling states.
“The current standard for preliminary injunctions is so low that it’s not really a standard at all,” said Emilee Cantrell, spokesperson for the Department of Justice. “As a result, constitutional laws like these may be blocked for months – or even years – before courts ever decide cases on the merits.”
“Armstrong was wrong the day it was decided and its use in delaying these commonsense laws that protect the health and safety of Montana women makes that even more clear,” Cantrell said in a statement.
The case had been fully briefed and submitted to the Montana Supreme Court on May 11. The U.S. Supreme court overturned Roe vs. Wade on June 24.
Soon after that, Attorney General Austin Knudsen and later Gov. Greg Gianforte asked the state Supreme Court to accept additional briefings in the request to overturn the Armstrong ruling.
“The court recognizes the potential implications of the Dobbs decision and the desire to afford full opportunity to be heard. But, for reasons explained in the opinion — which was in its final stages of review when the governor filed his motion — the appeal of this preliminary injunction is not the time for those arguments to be made and considered,” Justice Beth Baker wrote in the 5-0 ruling.
Missouri
Woman sentenced for trying to burn store during 2020 protest
ST. LOUIS (AP) — A woman was sentenced Tuesday to more than two years in prison for trying to set fire to a 7-Eleven store in St. Louis during a 2020 protest that followed the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
Nautica Turner, 27, pleaded guilty in February to a federal charge of conspiracy to commit arson. She was sentenced in U.S. District Court in St. Louis.
Federal prosecutors say that on June 1, 2020, Turner poured lighter fluid to start a fire at a 7-Eleven store in the downtown area of St. Louis. She first tried to light a cardboard box, and when that failed tried to light a fire in a trash bin outside the store, according to her plea agreement.
The trash can fire also failed, but someone else later started a fire that burned the convenience store to the ground.
The fire occurred on a violent night of protests that followed Floyd’s death on May 25, 2020.
In September, Justin Cannamore of St. Louis County was sentenced to three years in prison in connection with the fire. Prosecutors said he demonstrated a technique using lighter fluid to better burn the convenience store.
Massachusetts
Ex-school director gets home detention in college scam
BOSTON (AP) — A former director of private California school was sentenced Tuesday to three months of home confinement for his role in the sprawling college admissions bribery scheme.
Igor Dvorskiy, who was director of West Hollywood College Preparatory School, was ordered to serve one year of supervised release — including the three months of home detention — for allowing cheating on college entrance exams he administered. He pleaded guilty in 2019 to a charge of racketeering conspiracy.
Prosecutors say Dvorskiy agreed to administer ACT and SAT tests at West Hollywood College Prep for the clients of Rick Singer, a college admissions consultant and the bribery scheme’s mastermind, and let another man pretend to proctor the tests and correct their answers.
Dvorskiy is among more than 50 people convicted in the scandal that revealed a scheme to get the children of rich parents into top schools with rigged test scores and bogus athletic credentials.
Dvorskiy’s attorneys said in court papers that he feels “deep remorse” for his involvement in the scheme and “the impact that it has had on his family, community, and the college admissions system.”
They noted that his actions were “not motivated by a desire to personally enrich himself,” and that Dvorskiy put all the money that Singer gave him into West Hollywood College Prep.
“He takes full responsibility for his participation and he accepts the consequences of his guilty plea,” his lawyers wrote.
Singer is scheduled to be sentenced in November. He pleaded guilty to several felonies after helping authorities build the massive case by secretly recording his conversations with parents and athletic coaches.
Pennsylvania
2 nursing homes accused of health care fraud
PITTSBURGH (AP) — Managers at two skilled nursing facilities in western Pennsylvania fabricated records of staff time and residents’ conditions to defraud state and federal agencies, prosecutors alleged Tuesday in announcing criminal charges.
Brighton Rehabilitation and Wellness Center in Beaver and Mt. Lebanon Rehabilitation and Wellness Center in Allegheny County were accused of health care fraud, along with five people who managed their operations.
A grand jury indictment alleges nurses were told to clock in for shifts they did not work and timecards were provided to the state, and that assessments of residents’ conditions were changed to qualify for higher government reimbursement.
Among the defendants are Sam Halper, 39, of Miami, chief executive and partial owner of the homes. He was charged with conspiracy and falsifying health care records. Charges had been filed and made public more than a year ago against Susan Gilbert, 61, of Lawrence, the Mt. Lebanon facility’s former administrator.
Messages seeking comment were left for attorneys for Halper and Gilbert. The docket did not list lawyers for the facilities and the three other defendants.
