Court Digest

California
Man gets year in prison for sending vile messages to father of gun massacre victim
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — A California property manager was sentenced to a year in federal prison for sending more than 200 vile online messages to a father of a teenage girl who died in the 2018 massacre at Florida’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.

James Catalano, 62 of Fresno, was sentenced Friday by U.S. District Judge Robert Scola in Miami after pleading guilty in March to cyberstalking. Prosecutors called the messages he sent Fred Guttenberg “callous and cruel.”

Guttenberg’s 14-year-old daughter Jaime Guttenberg was murdered in the Feb. 14, 2018, shooting in Parkland that left 14 students and three staff members dead. Catalano also received three years probation and must undergo mental health treatment.

Catalano sent Guttenberg messages for eight months starting in December 2021 that celebrated Jaime Guttenberg’s death and reveled in the wounds she suffered. He also mocked the sadness and loss Guttenberg feels and directed obscenities, slurs and disturbing insults to him and his daughter.

Catalano told investigators he was angry at Guttenberg for his outspoken advocacy for stronger gun laws since his daughter’s death. He told them he believed Guttenberg was using his daughter’s death “to push his political agenda” and was “trying to put (Guttenberg) in check by sending him the messages.”

“By his own admission, the defendant was motivated to stalk the victim and send him heinous messages simply because he disagreed with the victim’s political views,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Arielle Klepach wrote in court documents. “He capitalized on the victim’s grief and the horrific nature of his daughter’s death in order to silence him.”

She wrote that Catalano sent similar messages to others, but he has not been charged in those cases.

Guttenberg said Monday that the sentence “is a big deal” and sends a message to those who cyberstalk the families of shooting victims that they will be caught and punished. He said Judge Scola agreed that while none of the messages contained a direct threat, in their totality they constituted one.

Catalano’s attorneys did not immediately return a call Monday seeking comment.

The former student who murdered Jaime Guttenberg and the others is serving a life sentence.

New Mexico
U.S. Forest Service sued over flooding deaths in wake of state’s largest recorded wildfire
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — Relatives of three people who died last year in a flash flood stemming from the largest wildfire in New Mexico’s recorded history are suing the U.S. Forest Service.

The wrongful death lawsuit filed earlier this month alleges the Forest Service was negligent in the management of the prescribed burn and also failed to close roads and prevent access to areas at risk for flooding that followed the Hermit’s Peak/Calf Canyon Fire.

The three West Texas residents were staying at a family cabin in northern New Mexico in July 2022 when monsoon rains hit the burn scar near Tecolote Creek. That created a flash flood that swept the three victims to their deaths.

According to the Albuquerque Journal, the lawsuit also contends that the Forest Service failed to provide adequate warnings to the victims about the dangers caused by the wildfire and the dangers of potential flooding in the area.

Neither the Forest Service nor its parent agency, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, has formally responded to the lawsuit so far.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture didn’t provide a settlement offer or denial of claims initially filed in the case earlier this year, according to the lawsuit.

The blaze burned more than 533 square miles (1,380 square kilometers) in San Miguel, Mora and Taos counties. Authorities said an improperly extinguished pile burn operation rekindled and merged with another prescribed fire that went awry, destroying about 900 structures, including several hundred homes. No deaths were reported while the fire raged for months.

Congress set aside nearly $4 billion to compensate victims. FEMA has said its claims office has paid more than $101 million so far for losses, but many families have complained that the federal government is not acknowledging the extent of the damage or the emotional toll the fire has had on families whose ties to the land go back generations.

Montana
Man gets 18 months in prison for repeated racist phone calls made to a church
BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — A Montana man has been sentenced to 18 months in federal prison for making repeated threatening and racist phone calls to a Billings church for two years after he went there seeking help and received a gift card from a Black employee, prosecutors said.

Joshua Leon Hiestand, 41, was sentenced Friday, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Montana. Hiestand pleaded guilty in June to making harassing telephone calls. A stalking charge was dismissed as part of the plea agreement.

“When Hiestand, a white man, went to a Billings church looking for help, an elderly African American woman who worked there responded with kindness and assistance,” U.S. Attorney Jesse Laslovich said in a statement. “In return and for nearly two years, Hiestand launched a barrage of harassing, hateful and racist calls and voicemails at her and the church. His racist conduct isn’t just abhorrent, it is illegal.”

Prosecutors alleged Hiestand went to the Presbyterian church in November 2020 seeking help. Five days later, the church received a voicemail in which someone, using a racially derogatory term, said he would give more money to the church if the church did not employ an African American. After three similar calls, the woman called Billings police.

A detective called the number used to leave the messages and spoke to Hiestand, who admitted making the calls and apologized for his behavior, prosecutors said. He was told to have no further contact with the church. Three days later, he left a voicemail with the church in which he apologized, court records said.

However, over the next 19 months Hiestand called and left a series of voicemails at the church that were at times threatening and racially hostile, prosecutors said. Investigators determined that after January 2021, Hiestand was placing the calls from outside the state of Montana.

Hiestand was arrested in November 2022 in Indiana and has remained in custody since then.

Hiestand’s public defender Gillian Gosch asked for a sentence of time served, arguing her client’s actions were affected by his mental health issues, which have resulted in psychiatric hospitalizations and which appear to be worsened by his use of illegal substances.

The Bureau of Prisons will decide whether Hiestand will receive credit for the 11 months he has already been in custody, officials said.

Hiestand remained in custody in the Yellowstone County jail on Monday.

Pennsylvania
Four face charges for theft of 2 million dimes
PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Federal authorities have released more details and unsealed charges in the theft of more than 2 million dimes earlier this year from a tractor-trailer that had picked up the coins from the U.S. Mint in Philadelphia.

The truck driver was bound for Miami when he pulled into a parking lot to sleep on April 13. During the night, thieves made off with a portion of its cargo of $750,000 in dimes, a shipment weighing about six tons, authorities had said earlier.

Thousands of coins were left scattered all over the lot in northeast Philadelphia.

The Philadelphia Inquirer reports that prosecutors contend that the theft — which they now say totaled $234,500 in stolen dimes — was part of a spree of robberies from tractor-trailers passing through the region that also netted the thieves frozen crab legs, shrimp, meat, beer and liquor.

Detectives said at the time that surveillance video showed six men, dressed in gray hoodies and armed with bolt cutters, approaching the truck in the middle of the night and breaking into it, then loading the coins into smaller bags and into a waiting truck.

The indictment unsealed Friday alleges that after the theft, thousands of dimes were converted into cash at coin machines in Maryland or through deposits to at least four different suburban Philadelphia banks, the newspaper reported.

Four Philadelphia men — 25-year-old Rakiem Savage, 31-year-old Ronald Byrd, 30-year-old Haneef Palmer and 32-year-old Malik Palmer — face conspiracy, robbery, theft of government money and other charges.

Messages seeking comment on the charges were sent Monday to attorneys for Savage and Malik Palmer; court documents don’t list attorneys for Byrd and Haneef Palmer, and a message could not be left at a number listed for the latter.

Minnesota
Ex-officer sentenced after assaulting man during unrest after murder of George Floyd
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — A former Minneapolis police officer was sentenced Monday to 15 days in the county workhouse, with eligibility for electronic home monitoring, after pleading guilty to assaulting a Black man during the unrest that followed the murder of George Floyd by another officer in 2020.

Justin Stetson, 35, also received two years of probation. Under the terms of his plea agreement, he must also complete an anger management course, pay about $3,000 in fines and refrain from applying for law enforcement jobs for the rest of his life, among other measures.

“The system that I believe was designed to provide justice to citizens … protected my attacker but not me,” Jaleel Stallings, 31, said in court on Monday, adding: “He brutally beat me. I offered no resistance.”

Stetson told the court that he reaffirmed his guilty plea and stood by his previously filed apology to Stallings, and that he accepts responsibility for his actions.

He was sentenced to serve his time in a workhouse, a county-run correctional facility separate from the main jail that houses offenders who have a year or less to serve.

The night of May 30, 2020, Stetson and other officers were enforcing a curfew when his group spotted four people in a parking lot. One was Stallings, an Army veteran with a permit to carry a gun.
The officers opened fire with rubber bullets. One hit Stallings in the chest. Stallings then fired three shots at the officers’ unmarked van but didn’t hurt anyone. He argued that he thought civilians had attacked him, and that he fired in self-defense.

When Stallings realized they were police, he dropped his gun and lay on the ground. Stetson kicked him in the face and in the head, then punched Stallings multiple times and slammed his head into the pavement, even after Stallings obeyed Stetson’s command to place his hands behind his back, according to the complaint. A sergeant finally told him to stop. The incident was caught on police body camera video.

Stallings suffered a fracture of his eye socket, plus cuts and bruises. He was later acquitted of an attempted murder charge.

Stetson admitted in court earlier this year that he went too far when he assaulted Stallings and that his use force was unreasonable and went beyond what officers legally can do.

The city of Minneapolis agreed last year to pay Stallings $1.5 million to settle a federal lawsuit alleging that Stetson and other officers violated his constitutional rights.