National Roundup

California
Man convicted of murder in the beheading of his girlfriend
REDWOOD CITY, Calif. (AP) — A Northern California man was found guilty of first-degree murder for beheading his girlfriend with a samurai sword on a city street last year.

A San Mateo County jury returned the verdict against Jose Rafael Solano Landaeta, 34, on Monday and continued to deliberate a series of aggravating factors that would affect sentencing.

Karina Castro, the 27-year-old mother of Landaeta’s then-1-year-old daughter, was killed outside her apartment in the city of San Carlos on Sept. 8, 2022. Castro also had another daughter.

During the three-week trial, the prosecution asserted that the defendant was motivated to kill Castro out of vengeance as their relationship devolved into threats and insults, Bay Area News Group reported.

The defense argued that he is stricken with schizophrenia, was not taking his medication, and attacked Castro after she attacked him with a small knife while his mind was clouded by earlier threats from Castro, the news group reported.

North Dakota
Appeals court upholds dismissal of pipeline lawsuit
BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) — A three-judge panel of the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld a federal judge’s 2021 decision dismissing a lawsuit filed by protesters of the Dakota Access Pipeline, who alleged law enforcement officers used excessive force during a clash in 2016.

Nine protesters filed the lawsuit in 2016. They alleged civil and constitutional rights violations in officers’ use of tear gas, rubber bullets, shotgun bean bags and water in below-freezing temperatures during the clash on Nov. 20, 2016, at a blocked highway bridge. Lead plaintiff and Navajo Nation member Vanessa Dundon said she sustained an eye injury.

The lawsuit’s defendants included the Morton and Stutsman county sheriffs, the Mandan police chief and 100 unidentified officers. In 2021, U.S. District Judge Daniel Traynor granted the officers’ request to dismiss the case. The protesters appealed in 2022. The appeals court decision affirming Traynor’s ruling came Nov. 3.

The defendants’ attorney, Randall Bakke, told The Bismarck Tribune that “Morton County and the other defendants are pleased with the 8th Circuit appellate court’s decision to uphold the North Dakota federal district court’s dismissal of all the plaintiffs’ claims against them.”

The protesters’ attorney, Rachel Lederman, told the newspaper: “This has been a hard-fought struggle by Indigenous-led water protectors to vindicate their constitutional rights, which were so egregiously violated at Standing Rock. It is disappointing to see the federal courts readily absolve law enforcement who brutally pummeled nonviolent, peaceful people with freezing high pressure water and dangerous, maiming munitions for hours on end.”

Similar lawsuits continue to play out, including cases filed by three protesters who say they were injured because of officers’ actions, and by two photographers who allege officers used excessive force and violated their constitutional rights while they were covering the protest.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers recently released a draft environmental review of the oil pipeline, part of a lengthy process expected to result in late 2024 with a decision as to the line’s controversial Missouri River crossing near the Standing Rock Reservation.

The pipeline has been operating since 2017. The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe opposes the pipeline as a risk to its drinking water supply due to the potential of a spill.


Iowa
Official’s wife convicted of 52 counts of voter fraud in ballot-stuffing scheme
SIOUX CITY, Iowa (AP) — The wife of a northwestern Iowa county supervisor was convicted Tuesday of a scheme to stuff the ballot box in her husband’s unsuccessful race for a Republican nomination to run for Congress in 2020.

The Sioux City Journal reports that jurors deliberated six hours before finding Kim Taylor guilty of 26 counts of providing false information in registering and voting, three counts of fraudulent registration and 23 counts of fraudulent voting.

Prosecutors said Taylor, a Vietnam native, approached numerous voters of Vietnamese heritage with limited English comprehension and filled out and signed election forms and ballots on behalf of them and their English-speaking children.

They said the scheme was designed to help her husband, Jeremy Taylor, a former Iowa House member, who finished a distant third in the race for the Republican nomination to run for Iowa’s 4th District congressional seat. Despite that loss, he ultimately won election to the Woodbury County Board of Supervisors that fall.

No one testified to seeing Kim Taylor personally sign any of the documents, but her presence in each voter’s home when the forms were filled out was the common thread through the case.

Jeremy Taylor, who met his wife while teaching in Vietnam, has not been charged, but has been named as an unindicted co-conspirator. The case remains under investigation. Assistant U.S. Attorney Ron Timmons, one of three prosecutors who presented the federal government’s case, said he couldn’t comment on any potential future indictments.

Kim Taylor, who remains free pending sentencing, faces up to five years in prison on each charge.

“Now is a time for empathy for a family that is suffering,” said her attorney, F. Montgomery Brown, adding his focus is to get the best outcome at sentencing.

Brown didn’t immediately respond to an email message from The Associateºd Press about the case or the couple’s reaction.

Woodbury County election officials became aware of possible voter fraud in September 2020, when two Iowa State University students from Sioux City requested absentee ballots, only to learn ballots had already been cast in their name.

They were allowed to withdraw those ballots and cast their own, but Woodbury County Auditor Pat Gill, who also is election commissioner, kept the fraudulent ballots. When processing absentee ballots on election night, election workers notified Gill that the handwriting on a number of them appeared to be similar.

Most voter fraud cases involve one voter casting a single ballot in another person’s name, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Richard Evans, who helped prosecute Taylor’s case.

“Despite what’s in the media, voter fraud is extremely rare,” Evans said. “To have someone vote dozens of times for several people, that is rare.”