Indiana
Convicted serial rapist sentenced to more than 150 years
INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — An Indiana judge has sentenced a convicted serial rapist to more than 150 years in prison, authorities said Monday.
Darrell Goodlow was charged in 2021 with 57 counts, including rape, burglary and criminal confinement. He pleaded guilty in March to nine counts, including eight felony counts of rape and one felony count of killing a domestic animal, as part of a plea agreement.
Marion Superior Judge Mark Stoner sentenced him to 156 1/2 years behind bars on Friday, prosecutors said in a news release.
“With this resolution, the defendant will spend the rest of his life in prison without putting the survivors in a position to relive the trauma they have experienced throughout the duration of a trial,” Marion County Prosecutor Ryan Mears said.
Telephone messages were left with defense attorneys listed in online court records as representing Goodlow.
Prosecutors alleged that Goodlow targeted women in their 60s and 70s on the east side of Indianapolis and in the suburb of Lawrence. They accused Goodlow of sexually assaulting eight women on six different occasions between August 2020 and September 2021.
In some cases, he dressed as a utility worker to gain access to his victims’ homes. He killed one of his victims’ dogs during one attack, police said.
A fingerprint at one of the scenes helped investigators identify him. They also matched his DNA to evidence collected in all eight cases.
Washington
Bill to set minimum marriage age to 18 stalls
OLYMPIA, Wash. (AP) — A bill in Washington state to establish a minimum marriage age of 18 has stalled again in the Legislature.
According to nonprofit organization Unchained At Last, between 2000 and 2018 nearly 300,000 children were married in the U.S., and most of the marriages were between girls and adult men.
In Washington state, 4,831 people younger than age 18 were married between 2000 and 2018, according to the organization. And Washington is one of just a handful of states that don’t specify a minimum age for marriage.
House Bill 1455 seemed to have momentum in early March, when it unanimously passed the Washington House. But it languished in the Senate, where it didn’t get voted out of the Senate Law and Justice Committee in time to meet a deadline, The Seattle Times reported.
This year, states including West Virginia and Wyoming raised their minimum marriage ages to 18, with some exceptions. In the Pacific Northwest, Oregon’s minimum marriage age is 17 while in Idaho the minimum age is 16, according to the organization.
Children of any age can still get married in Washington state. If they’re 17, they can do so with parental consent, and if they’re younger than that, they need approval from a judge.
“Almost always,” the people forcing children to marry are their own parents, according to Fraidy Reiss, founder and executive director of Unchained At Last.
Many Americans aren’t aware that child marriage is an issue here, Reiss said. She explained that there’s no organized opposition to ending child marriage, but state lawmakers haven’t prioritized changing the law.
“I think it’s still happening because it’s an issue that is primarily impacting girls,” Reiss said. “And legislators are not known for prioritizing girls’ issues ... And because most Americans are unaware of this, they’re not hearing from their own constituents saying, ‘What the hell? You need to change this.’”
Democratic Sen. Manka Dhingra of Redmond, who is chair of the Law and Justice Committee, told the newspaper she had to evaluate which of the 65 bills that were sent to her committee needed to pass this year.
“I look forward to giving it a hearing next session,” Dhingra said.
The legislative session ends Sunday and lawmakers will convene again in early 2024.
New Mexico
Judge seals Alec Baldwin settlement terms in fatal shooting
SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) — The judge hearing the wrongful death lawsuit against actor Alec Baldwin and an array of producers and crew linked to a fatal film set shooting agreed Monday to seal from public view the terms of a proposed settlement agreement in the case that benefits the son of slain cinematographer Halyna Hutchins.
The New Mexico judge said the right to privacy for Hutchins’ 10-year-old son overrides obligations for public disclosure and ordered that settlement documents and approval hearings be sealed in the civil lawsuit that argues that Baldwin and other film crewmembers ignored industry gun safety standards on the set of the Western film “Rust” ahead of the 2021 shooting.
“What is driving my decision is really the interests of the minor child. And that is one of the very most powerful reasons to seal a matter,” District Court Judge Bryan Biedscheid said in a videoconference hearing of the Santa Fe-based court.
Baldwin, an actor and coproducer of the film, was pointing a pistol at Hutchins during a rehearsal on the film’s set outside Santa Fe when the gun went off, killing her and wounding director Joel Souza. He and other defendants have disputed the accusations that they were lax with safety standards.
Widower Matthew Hutchins filed the wrongful death suit last year against “Rust” producers, including Baldwin, as well as members of the film crew with safety responsibilities and an ammunition supplier. Son Andros Hutchins, who was 9 at the time of the shooting, is also named as a plaintiff.
Attorneys for they boy said Monday that secrecy provisions are paramount to protect his privacy and finalize a settlement with “Rust” producers.
Knowledge of the settlement terms also will be off limits to people beyond “Rust” producers who were named as defendants in the lawsuit, including weapons supervisor Hannah Gutierrez-Reed. Several of those defendants objected to being left in the dark on details of the settlement, though approval of the agreement should end their involvement in the wrongful death suit.
Gutierrez-Reed and Baldwin are also confronting criminal charges of involuntary manslaughter in separate court proceedings and have pleaded not guilty, with two weeks of evidentiary hearings scheduled in May.
Matthew Hutchins outlined a proposed settlement agreement in October that opened the way for filming of “Rust” to resume in Montana. He’ll serve as a producer.
