Illinois
Man gets 12 years in crash that killed 2 college students
GENEVA, Ill. (AP) — A suburban Chicago man has been sentenced to 12 years in prison after pleading guilty for his role in a street racing crash that killed two Judson University students last year.
Trevon Morris, 22, was sentenced Monday by a Kane County judge. The Elgin, Illinois, man had pleaded guilty in October to aggravated driving under the influence of cannabis, causing death.
Morris had 15 nanograms per milliliter of THC in his blood when it was tested after the deadly crash. That’s three times the legal limit for cannabis intoxication, The (Arlington Heights) Daily Herald reported.
Morris was driving more than 91 mph (146.5 kilometers per hour) on the night of April 20, 2021, when he hit a car carrying four Judson University students as that car was making a turn along Route 31 to enter the school’s Elgin campus, prosecutors said.
Dallas Colburn, 22, of Plano, Illinois, and Nathanael Madison, 22, of Wernersville, Pennsylvania, died in the crash and the two other students were injured.
Authorities allege that Morris and Kahleel L. Steele, 23, of Carpentersville were racing when Morris’ car hit the students’ vehicle. Steele is awaiting trial on charges of reckless homicide and aggravated street racing.
Alabama
Women convicted for feeding, trapping stray cats
WETUMPKA, Ala. (AP) — Two Alabama women have been convicted of misdemeanor crimes because of their efforts to feed and trap stray cats.
Local news outlets report that Wetumpka Municipal Judge Jeff Courtney on Tuesday found Beverly Roberts, 85, guilty of criminal trespassing and disorderly conduct. Mary Alston, 61, was found guilty of criminal trespassing and interfering with governmental operations.
Courtney sentenced both women to 2 years of unsupervised probation and 10 days in jail. The jail sentence was suspended, meaning the women will serve no time. Each woman was also fined $100 and ordered to pay court costs.
The verdicts followed a bench trial before Courtney in the town just north of Montgomery. Attorneys for the two women say they will appeal.
The women were arrested and taken to jail by police in Wetumpka in June. The police chief said the women had previously been warned not to feed stray animals.
Terry Luck, an attorney for one of the women, said earlier that the women were performing a public service by trapping stray cats and having them neutered and spayed.
Wetumpka Police Chief Greg Benton has said feeding the cats had created a nuisance because it attracted more animals to the area. He said both women had been “repeatedly” warned to stop prior to being arrested.
Washington
Bail set at $1M for man accused in armed courthouse standoff
EVERETT, Wash. (AP) — A man suspected of carrying guns into a courthouse in Washington state earlier in the week, prompting a standoff and a three-hour lockdown before his arrest, had bail set Tuesday at $1 million.
Snohomish County District Court Presiding Judge Jennifer Rancourt set bail during a first court appearance for 32-year-old David Hsu, The Daily Herald reported.
Hsu’s attorney, Lorcan Malone, had requested little to no bail, noting Hsu has no criminal history and wasn’t accused of any violent offenses. Hsu, of Woodinville, remained jailed Tuesday afternoon.
Rancourt said she found probable cause to hold Hsu on investigation of resisting arrest, carrying a concealed weapon, disorderly conduct, and unlawful display of a weapon.
Wearing a protective vest, Hsu had entered the Snohomish County Courthouse lobby in Everett at about 12:30 p.m. Monday with guns and ammunition, the county sheriff’s office said. Hsu demanded to see two judges and the sheriff to change arrangements for custody of his child, detectives said in court documents.
Hsu was immediately confronted by law enforcement officers who ordered him to drop his weapons, authorities said, adding he placed two rifles on the ground, but refused to relinquish additional firearms and weapons and leave the building.
After hours of negotiations with law enforcement, Hsu was arrested. No one was hurt.
Sheriff’s office detectives said they recovered two rifles, four handguns, more than 300 rounds of ammunition, a ballistic armor vest, six knives, a hatchet and brass knuckles from the lobby of the courthouse.
Oklahoma
Judge rules against state in attempt to execute inmate
OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — A federal judge in Texas on Tuesday rejected Oklahoma’s attempt to have a federal prisoner transferred to state custody so he can be executed.
U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor denied Oklahoma’s request to have inmate John Fitzgerald Hanson, 58, transferred from federal custody to Oklahoma and dismissed the case for lack of jurisdiction.
Oklahoma sued the Federal Bureau of Prisons in October for refusing to turn over Hanson to state authorities, with federal officials saying at the time the transfer was “not in the public’s best interest.”
Oklahoma argued that federal prison officials acted beyond the scope of their authority, but the judge rejected that argument and wrote in his ruling that the Bureau of Prisons director has broad discretion over whether to refuse a transfer request based on his determination of the public interest.
Hanson was initially scheduled to receive a lethal injection on Thursday at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester.
He was sentenced to death in Tulsa County, Oklahoma, after he was convicted of carjacking, kidnapping and killing Mary Bowles, 77, after he and an accomplice kidnapped the woman from a Tulsa shopping mall. Hanson also is serving a life sentence for several federal convictions, including being a career criminal, that predate his state death sentence.
“We disagree with the court’s decision,” Oklahoma Attorney General John O’Connor, who is not related to the judge, said in a statement. “It is in the public interest for John Hanson to face justice for the murder of Mary Bowles. We are evaluating our options going forward.”
The U.S. Justice Department under Democratic President Joe Biden — who has vowed to work to end the death penalty — announced last year that it was halting federal executions. That step came after a historic use of capital punishment under Donald Trump’s presidency, with 13 executions carried out in six months. The Bureau of Prisons’ refusal to turn over Hanson has raised questions about whether the agency is using its power to deliver on the president’s political pledge.
Messages left Tuesday with attorneys for the Bureau of Prisons were not immediately returned.
Oklahoma has put to death seven inmates since resuming executions in October 2021 and has scheduled 18 more executions in 2023 and 2024. The state had one of the nation’s busiest death chambers until problems in 2014 and 2015 led to a de facto moratorium. That included prison officials realizing they received the wrong lethal drug just hours away from executing Richard Glossip in September 2015. It was later learned the same wrong drug had been used to execute an inmate in January 2015.
The drug mix-ups followed a botched execution in April 2014 in which inmate Clayton Lockett struggled on a gurney before dying 43 minutes into his lethal injection — and after the state’s prisons chief ordered executioners to stop.
South Dakota
Prosecutors drop all charges against Indigenous activist
SIOUX FALLS S.D. (AP) — South Dakota prosecutors have dropped all charges against the head of an Indigenous-led advocacy organization stemming from a protest during then-President Donald Trump’s visit to Mount Rushmore, the group announced Tuesday.
NDN Collective President Nick Tilsen was among those arrested July 3, 2020, when the protest seeking return of the Black Hills to Lakota control escalated into a scuffle with law enforcement. The charges included robbery and assault of a law enforcement officer.
Tilsen agreed to participate in a diversion program rather than face prison time, but claimed prosecutors backed out of the agreement last year after he spoke to the media about it. In his motion for dismissal, Tilsen said his remarks were protected by the First Amendment.
Deputy State’s Attorney Colleen Moran filed the dismissal Nov. 18, court documents show.
“My case held a mirror up to the so-called legal system, where prosecutors — fueled by white fragility and fear of Indigenous power — wasted years of state resources to intimidate, criminalize, and violate me,” Tilsen said in a statement Tuesday. “The fact that I’ve gone from facing 17 years in prison to all charges dismissed is not a coincidence or an act of justice — it’s evidence that the charges were bogus from the start.”
The case was transferred earlier from Pennington County in Rapid City to Minnehaha County in Sioux Falls. The original prosecutor, Pennington County State’s Attorney Mark Vargo, who is temporarily serving as South Dakota’s interim attorney general, said he had a conflict of interest because he was called to testify.
Minnehaha County States Attorney Daniel Haggar did not immediately return a phone call seeking comment on the decision to dismiss the charges.
Missouri
Guilty plea on hate, arson charges in Islamic center fire
CAPE GIRARDEU, Mo. (AP) — A man has pleaded guilty to hate crime and arson charges for setting a fire that destroyed an Islamic center in southeast Missouri two years ago, the U.S. Justice Department announced Tuesday.
Nicholas John Proffitt, 44, entered the plea in the case of the torching of the Cape Girardeau Islamic Center on April 24, 2020, which was the first day of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, the department said. It was the second time he had attacked the building.
Security video showed Proffitt breaking the building’s glass window and throwing two containers inside. He then entered, poured the contents of two gallon-size containers throughout the foyer and the hallway and lit the blaze, according to court records.
About a dozen people were inside at the time but escaped unharmed. The fire made the building unsuitable for use as a center.
Proffitt admitted he set the blaze because of the religious nature of the building, prosecutors said.
His public defender did not immediately return an after-hours phone call seeking comment.
Sentencing is set for May 22. Proffitt faces up to 20 years in prison for damage to religious property and a mandatory minimum of 10 years, consecutive to any other sentence, for using fire to commit a federal felony. He also could be fined up to $250,000 on each charge.
In 2009, Proffitt pleaded guilty to state charges for throwing rocks that damaged the same mosque and a vehicle in the parking lot. He was sentenced to three years in prison in that incident.
