Mississippi
Ex-teacher rejects plea in child porn case, fires lawyers
OXFORD, Miss. (AP) — A former high school teacher in northeast Mississippi has rejected a plea deal on charges that he sexually exploited children.
Federal court records show Toshemie Wilson of Okolona rejected a plea agreement last week and fired his defense attorneys. Court papers don’t reflect the nature of the plea agreement.
The 47-year-old Wilson was indicted in July on 10 counts of sexual exploitation of children, all of which took place when he was teaching at Amory High School. Wilson is accused of photographing or making videos of nine minors between 2006 and 2016. Officials have said he targeted students in the high school’s technology club, giving them cash or drugs to perform sex acts alone or with a blow-up doll.
U.S. District Judge Debra Brown on Friday gave Wilson 30 days to hire a new lawyer or request a public defender.
Wilson, who is jailed in Oxford, faces at least 150 years in prison if convicted on all 10 counts. A trial had been scheduled for Feb. 6.
State education officials learned that Wilson may have abused students in November 2020 after a former student talked to a counselor. Investigators found images of boys performing sexual acts on his phone and computer.
Wilson was originally arrested by state officials in May 2021 after investigators searched his house and storage building and seized more than 300 items, including videos labeled with sexual positions and the names of Amory students.
Georgia
Prosecutor won’t charge deputy in 2022 shooting
PERRY, Ga. (AP) — A middle Georgia prosecutor says he won’t pursue criminal charges against a sheriff’s deputy who in February 2022 shot and killed a man who had been reported as suicidal.
Houston County District Attorney William Kendall told The Telegraph of Macon that the shooting of Matthew Deese, 32, was justified after a two-hour standoff with local officers in Perry.
“The individual involved raised a firearm, pointed it directly at one of the deputies and the deputy in response returned fire,” Kendall said.
Perry police responded to a call about a man trying to kill himself, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation has said. Deese exited a home holding a gun, and officers tried to get him to put down the firearm, according to GBI. Deese then barricaded himself inside the home.
The Houston County Sheriff’s Office Special Response Team took over and tried to negotiate. Deese was later shot and taken to a Macon hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
It was one of two times last year when an officer in Houston County shot and killed someone with mental health problems.
Georgia lawmakers last year required the state’s 23 community service boards to provide mental health co-responders to any local law enforcement agency that wants them, hoping to cut down on shootings of mentally distressed people.
Middle Flint Behavioral Healthcare, the board that serves Houston County, recently applied for funding from the Georgia Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Disabilities to create a co-response team for Houston County.
New Hampshire
Former police captain acquitted of tax fraud, sold firearms
CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — A former police captain in New Hampshire has been acquitted by a jury of filing a false income tax return deriving from profits earned from selling firearms.
Michael Wagner, who was with the Salem Police Department, was indicted in 2020, accused of buying 36 assault rifles using his police discount from Sig Sauer Academy in Epping in 2012 and 2013 and reselling them at a profit that was omitted from his tax return.
The sales took place shortly after the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre in Connecticut.
Prosecutors said Wagner evaded $5,000 in taxes.
He was found not guilty Friday following his trial in U.S. District Court in Concord.
Wagner’s lawyers said the verdict validated the defense’s central theme that the Internal Revenue Service investigation was disorderly and unfairly targeted Wagner because he was a police officer.
“The tax fraud charges were not supported by the evidence, and we are grateful for the jury’s decision,” his lawyer, Mark Lytle, said in a statement.
Wagner and other Salem officers were named in letters from the attorney general’s office in 2019 saying they were under investigation following a department audit. He was not charged with any other offenses.
Texas
Man pleads guilty to role in $1.6M romance scam
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — A Texas man has pleaded guilty to his role in a romance scam in which women from across the nation were cheated out of a total of about $1.6 million by someone often pretending to be a U.S. Army general.
Fola Alabi, who is also known as Folayemi Alabi, 52, pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Rhode Island last week to conspiracy and money laundering, federal prosecutors said in a statement Monday.
According to prosecutors, someone often posing as a general stationed overseas befriended women online, then gradually gained their trust by feigning romantic or personal interest.
The women, often in their 70s and 80s and widowed or divorced, were persuaded to send cash or checks to addresses and companies controlled by Alabi, who lived in Richmond, Texas, near Houston.
The money was then deposited into bank accounts he also controlled, prosecutors said, before being quickly withdrawn or transferred.
Federal agents who searched Alabi’s cellphone found photographs and videos of packages containing cash and checks he had received from some victims, prosecutors said.
The victims were from Rhode Island, Tennessee, North Carolina, California, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Arizona, Texas, Idaho and South Dakota, authorities said.
An Arizona woman lost $334,000, according to an affidavit filed in the case. She “felt shame, embarrassment, and guilt over being scammed” and did not have enough money for food or to pay bills as a result, according to the affidavit.
A Rhode Island woman sent a check for $60,000 and was going to send an additional $240,000, but her bank determined that she might be a victim of fraud, put a hold on her account and contacted local police, authorities said.
Sentencing is scheduled for April 25.
Texas
Former trooper found guilty of assaulting women
HOUSTON (AP) — A former Texas trooper has been found guilty of assaulting two women while he was on duty in the Houston area in 2020, federal prosecutors said.
Prosecutors said Friday that a jury found that Lee Ray Boykin Jr., 33, deprived two separate victims of their right to bodily integrity while acting in his capacity as a Texas Department of Public Safety trooper by committing aggravated sexual abuse in one case and kidnapping in the other.
U.S. Attorney Alamdar S. Hamdani said in a news release that Boykin “used his authority to stalk and prey on his victims for his own sexual gratification.”
Boykin faces up to life in federal prison when he is sentenced in April. Prosecutors said he has been in custody and will remain so pending sentencing.
Boykin was also found guilty of two counts of destruction, alteration or falsification of records.
Prosecutors said that at trial, one victim said Boykin took her to a secluded parking lot after ordering her out of her friend’s car following a traffic stop. She said Boykin then falsely accused her of being a prostitute, threatened to take her to jail and forced her to perform oral sex on him before telling her to run while placing his hand on his gun.
The second victim testified that Boykin falsely told her she had outstanding traffic warrants and then ordered her out of her friend’s car and took her to the same parking lot, prosecutors said. He was accused in a criminal complaint of demanding she perform oral sex, which she told investigators she did because she was scared.
Prosecutors said that days later, Boykin tried to get her into his vehicle again but she was able to escape.
Indiana
Man convicted of murder, other counts in boy’s beating death
LAFAYETTE, Ind. (AP) — A jury has convicted a Michigan man of murder and other charges in the beating death of a 3-year-old boy in Lafayette.
Jermaine Garnes of West Bloomfield, Michigan, was convicted of murder, neglect resulting in death, aggravated battery resulting in death and battery on a person under 14 resulting in death. The jury returned the verdicts Wednesday.
Garnes and his girlfriend, Crystal Lynn Cox, were both charged in August 2021 in connection with the death of 3-year-old Zeus Cox. The little boy was found dead on a bedroom floor with bruises on his chest, stomach and other areas of his body.
The couple gave police conflicting accounts. Cox said he had fallen on concrete and later ran into a table. Garnes told police Zeus had fallen off his bike.
Witnesses told police Garnes struck the 3-year-old with his fist.
An autopsy revealed the 3-year-old died from multiple blunt force trauma injuries to his abdomen that ruptured the boy’s intestines and caused rib fractures and internal bleeding.
Cox was found guilty of murder, neglect resulting in death, aggravated battery resulting in death, and battery on a person under 14 resulting in death last May and was sentenced to 53 years in prison.
Garnes’ sentencing has not yet been scheduled.
Ohio
Long on death row, man freed pending retrial in 1994 slaying
CINCINNATI (AP) — A man who spent a quarter-century on death row in the robbery and murder of a New Jersey woman at an Ohio hotel nearly three decades ago has been freed on bond while awaiting a new trial.
Elwood Jones of Cincinnati was convicted of aggravated murder, robbery and burglary in the 1994 beating death of Rhoda Nathan, 67, of Toms River, New Jersey, in Blue Ash, a Cincinnati suburb.
Police said Nathan, a grandmother in town over the Labor Day weekend to attend the bar mitzvah of her best friend’s grandson, was killed after she surprised a would-be robber in her room. Jones was a hotel employee and was on the job that day, police said.
The death sentence imposed on Jones was upheld by the Ohio Supreme Court. But last month, a Hamilton County judge granted him a new trial after concluding that prosecutors had not turned over evidence relevant to the case to his attorneys. County prosecutors have vowed to appeal the decision.
Officials said Jones, released from Hamilton County jail Saturday on $50,000 unsecured bond, will be under electronic monitoring and is barred from leaving the county.
“This is justice for the first time in three decades,” defense attorney David Hine said. Program manager Bekky Baker of the Intercommunity Justice and Peace Center, which supported a new trial, said Jones had been behind bars “for like over 9,000 days for something he didn’t do.”
Prosecutors said in a statement that 10 courts had reviewed and upheld the conviction, and Jones’ release was ordered despite a state constitutional prohibition on bail for those charged with capital offenses.
“The family of Rhoda Nathan and the people of Hamilton County deserve better than this,” the statement said.
