Court Digest

California
Mom charged with hosting parties for teens and encouraging sexual assault
SANTA CLARA, Calif. (AP) — A woman accused of hosting parties for her teenage son and his friends in Northern California where she encouraged them to drink and sexually assault intoxicated girls was charged Monday with more than five dozen felony and misdemeanor counts.

Shannon Marie O’Connor, 49, was indicted by a grand jury in Santa Clara County on 63 charges including child endangerment for furnishing alcohol to minors and aiding and abetting sexual assault, the Mercury News reported.

Seventeen alleged victims testified at the grand jury hearing, the paper said.

Prosecutors contend that O’Connor staged six alcohol-fueled parties in 2020 at her-then home in Los Gatos and other places. Prosecutors allege she bought beer, vodka, whiskey and other liquor and encouraged the teens, who were mostly 14 and 15, to drink to the point of unconsciousness.

She also told them to keep the gatherings a secret and on several occasions helped teens sneak out of their homes in the middle of the night to attend them, according to court documents.

At a December 2020 party, O’Connor allegedly handed a condom to a boy and pushed him into a room with an intoxicated girl. Both were minors.

The girl was able to get away and locked herself in the bathroom, authorities said in court filings.

During a New Year’s Eve party at her home with about five 14-year-olds, O’Connor allegedly watched and laughed as a drunk teen sexually battered a young girl in bed, authorities alleged.

In another case, she allegedly brought a drunk teen into a bedroom at her home where he sexually assaulted an intoxicated 14-year-old girl. That girl told investigators that at another party she was so drunk she almost drowned in a hot tub, according to the court filings.

O’Connor was arrested in 2021 in Ada County, Idaho, where she was living at the time.

New Jersey
Ex-military couple hit with longer prison time in 4th sentencing in child abuse case
NEWARK, N.J. (AP) — A former U.S. Army major and his wife accused of routinely beating their young foster children and denying them food and water as punishment have been sentenced for a fourth time.

Carolyn Jackson was ordered Monday to serve nearly 12 years in prison, while her husband, John, was sentenced to 9 years. The terms were imposed by U.S. District Judge Susan Wigenton, who was assigned to the case in April after a federal appeals court found U.S. District Judge Katharine Hayden — who had handled the previous three sentencings — failed to follow its directions to consider the children’s multiple injuries “holistically and in the context of the jury’s findings of guilt” in determining causation.

Federal prosecutors had appealed each of the sentences imposed by Hayden, arguing they were too lenient. Noting the repeated sentencings, the appellate panel also concluded that Hayden — who presided over the Jacksons’ 2015 trial — would have “substantial difficulty in putting out of her mind her previously expressed views of the evidence,” so they ordered that the matter be reassigned to another jurist.

The last sentencing in the case occurred in October 2021. Carolyn Jackson, who had already served a 40-month prison term in two stretches, was sentenced to time served and given an additional year of supervised release. John Jackson, who had finished a probationary term, was sentenced to 18 months’ home confinement.

At the time, Hayden concluded that imposing more prison time “is more punishment than is necessary.” Prosecutors, who had recommended a sentencing range of between nine and 11 years, called the sentences insufficient and accused Hayden of not following guidelines set by the appeals court.

In 2015, the U.S. attorney’s office had sought prison sentences of 15 years or more after the couple was convicted on multiple counts of child endangerment. After the first sentencing was struck down, Hayden extended their sentences in 2018, but that was rejected on appeal as well.

Sentencing in the case has been complicated by the fact that the trial took place in federal court since the Jacksons lived at Picatinny Arsenal, a New Jersey military facility, during the time in question. Because child endangerment is not a federal crime, state endangerment charges were merged into the federal indictment to go along with a conspiracy count and two federal assault counts.

The Jacksons were acquitted of the assault counts, but prosecutors argued Hayden should sentence them under assault guidelines anyway because the nature of the child endangerment counts made them “sufficiently analogous” to assault. Defense attorneys argued prosecutors didn’t connect specific acts by the Jacksons to injuries the children suffered.

The Jacksons’ trial produced testimony that their three foster children suffered broken bones, were severely underweight and had other health problems when they were removed from the home in 2010. The couple’s biological son testified the couple forced the children to eat hot pepper flakes and drink hot sauce as punishment.

A fourth foster child in their care died, but the Jacksons weren’t charged with his death. At trial, the Jacksons’ lawyers argued that the children had preexisting health problems, and said the couple’s child-rearing methods may have been unconventional but weren’t criminal.

New Mexico
Man receives 35-year sentence for beating ­stepdaughter to death
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — An Española man has been sentenced to 35 years in prison for the 2019 beating death of his 5-year-old stepdaughter, federal officials announced Monday.

U.S. Attorney Alexander M.M. Uballez and Special Agent Raul Bujanda of the FBI Albuquerque Field Office announced the sentencing of Malcolm Torres in a joint statement.

Torres for years had never taken responsibility for the crime, Uballez said.

Torres was given the sentence in exchange for pleading guilty in April to second-degree murder in the slaying of Renezmae Calzada.

He was facing a potential felony charge of first-degree murder, which could have brought life in prison.

After serving his sentence, Torres will be under supervised release for five years.

Torres, 30, was tasked with watching the girl and his 18-month-old son in Sept. 7, 2019. According to prosecutors, he was heavily intoxicated at the time.

When the girl’s grandparents arrived at the home the next day, Torres said Renezmae had gone missing.

Her mother reported her missing. Police say Torres would not help them and even gave false and misleading information.

The girl’s body was found three days later on the Santa Clara Pueblo in the Rio Grande, a mile from the Española yard where she was last seen. Her body showed signs of blunt-force trauma to her head, torso and extremities.

The investigation into her disappearance and death brought together federal, state, local and tribal law enforcement.

Tennessee
Officials to pay $125K to settle claim they arrested a man for meme about fallen officer
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Authorities in Tennessee have settled a First Amendment lawsuit for $125,000, the plaintiff’s attorneys said Monday. The suit was filed by a man who said he was arrested over a disparaging social media post about a law enforcement officer killed in the line of duty.

Joshua Andrew Garton was arrested in January 2021 after posting a meme depicting two people urinating on a gravestone with a photo of a Dickson County sheriff’s officer who was fatally shot in 2018 pasted into the image. Garton’s attorneys filed a federal lawsuit in Nashville, saying their client’s First Amendment right to free speech was violated.

Garton’s post was captioned, “Just showing my respect to deputy Daniel Baker from the #dicksoncountypolicedepartment.”

The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation was called in at the request of District Attorney Ray Crouch. Investigators determined the photo was taken from an album cover with a copy of Baker’s official work portrait “crudely” edited onto the grave, court documents show.

Garton was charged with harassment and jailed for nearly two weeks on a $76,000 bond until a Dickson County judge dismissed the charges.

“First Amendment retaliation is illegal, and law enforcement officials who arrest people for offending them will pay heavy consequences,” Garton’s lead counsel, Daniel Horwitz, said in a news release Monday.

A copy of the notarized settlement signed by Garton was included in the news release, showing he agreed to accept $125,000 from the state to settle claims against two Tennessee Bureau of Investigation officials and Crouch, the district attorney. The agreement also says the government defendants are not admitting wrongdoing, liability or concession by settling, but instead are seeking to “avoid the burden and expense of continuing this litigation.”

A court filing Monday by Garton’s attorneys notified the judge of the settlement and said the lawsuit should be dismissed.

Documents released under a public records request filed by Horwitz show investigators believed Garton’s social media post could be perceived as threatening or intimidating to Baker’s surviving relatives — even though he did not send it to them.

“The trolls will do what trolls do. It appears they and the lawyers forget that there are surviving family members who have rights as well,” TBI Director David Rausch said in a text conversation included in the records.

The lawsuit argued Garton was the victim of “false arrest and malicious prosecution” with authorities “incarcerating him for weeks and broadcasting his mugshot and the fact of his arrest to news media and the public in retaliation for disrespecting police.”


Oklahoma
Poultry companies ask judge to dismiss ruling that they polluted a watershed
A group of poultry producers, including the world’s largest, have asked a federal judge to dismiss his ruling that they polluted an Oklahoma watershed.

Arkansas-based Tyson Foods, Minnesota-based Cargill Inc. and the others say in a motion filed Thursday that evidence in the case is now more than 13 years old.

“This case is constitutionally moot because the Court can no longer grant any effectual relief,” the companies argued in a filing with U.S. District Judge Gregory Frizzell in Tulsa.
The filing said Oklahoma conservation officials have noted a steady decline in pollution. It credited improved wastewater treatment plants, state laws requiring poultry-litter management plans and fewer poultry farms as a result of growing metropolitan areas in northwest Arkansas.

Frizzell ruled in January that the companies were responsible for pollution of the Illinois River Watershed by disposing of chicken litter, or manure, that leached into the river.

The trial in the lawsuit that was filed in 2005 by the state of Oklahoma had ended in 2013 with no ruling for 10 years. In January, Frizzell issued his decision without addressing the reason for the decade-long delay.

Frizzell had ordered the poultry companies and the state to reach an agreement on how to remedy the effects of the pollution.

Attorneys for the companies and the state attorney general each said in Thursday filings that mediation had failed.