California
Court ruling will allow student housing at UC Berkeley’s People’s Park
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — People’s Park in Berkeley, which since the Vietnam War has been a site for protests and counterculture movements, can be converted into student housing for the University of California, the state Supreme Court ruled Thursday, capping a yearslong legal fight over the landmark.
The court ruled that a new law enacted in 2023 invalidates the claims by two local organizations that sued the school, saying more students living in downtown Berkeley would add noise pollution to an already dense area.
Because of the new law, which “all parties have effectively acknowledged, this lawsuit poses no obstacle to the development of the People’s Park housing project,” Chief Justice Patricia Guerrero wrote in the unanimous decision.
California is desperate for more housing of all types, including for students at its public universities and colleges. Some students sleep in their cars, crash on friends’ couches, or commute hours to attend class due to limited space in dorms and nearby apartments.
The court noted that Berkeley provides housing to the lowest percentage of students compared to other schools in the UC system. During the 2023-2024 academic year, UC Berkeley housed 9,905 students, about 22% of the university’s 45,699 enrolled students, UC Berkeley spokesperson Kyle Gibson said in an email.
UC Berkeley plans to build a $312 million housing complex for about 1,100 of its students at the nearly 3-acre (1.2-hectare) People’s Park, which it owns. Protests have at times escalated into skirmishes between police and activists.
In 2022, activists broke through an 8-foot (2-meter) chain fence erected around the park as crews began clearing trees to make room for the housing project. In January, police officers in riot gear removed activists from the park as crews began walling off the site with double-stacked shipping containers.
The park was founded in 1969 as part of the era’s free speech and Civil Rights Movement and for decades served as a gathering space for free meals, community gardening and art projects, and was used by homeless people. It turned into both a symbol of resistance and mayhem during a deadly confrontation that year known as “Bloody Thursday,” emboldening then-California Gov. Ronald Reagan to send in 3,000 National Guardsmen for a two-week occupation that evoked images of war in a city that was clamoring for peace in Vietnam.
The university is relieved by the court’s decision and it will turn its attention to resuming construction at the site, Gibson said.
“Our students and unhoused people desperately need the housing components of the project, and the entire community will benefit from the fact that more than 60% of the 2.8-acre site will be revitalized as open park space,” Gibson said in a statement.
Make UC a Good Neighbor and The People’s Park Historic District Advocacy Group filed a lawsuit against the project, saying that the university system should have considered increased noise under the California Environmental Quality Act, or CEQA. They also said there are more appropriate places the university could build, and the park is a rare green space in one of Berkeley’s densest neighborhoods.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom vowed to work with legislators to amend the law after a state appeals court last year ruled against the University of California, saying that it failed to assess the impact of potential noise “from loud student parties” on residential neighborhoods.
In September, Newsom signed a law that amended CEQA to clarify that housing projects do not need to study the noise generated by prospective future residents.
Harvey Smith, president of the People’s Park Historic District Advocacy Group and one of the plaintiffs, said the decision was disappointing but not surprising.
“It’s disappointing because community groups play by the rules and when we win what UC does is go to the Legislature to change the rules,” Smith said.
“Community groups don’t have the deep pockets or powerful connections UC does,” he added.
North Carolina
Woman and her dad complete prison sentences for death of her Irish husband
RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — The wife of an Irish businessman who was beaten to death in 2015 and the woman’s father were released from separate North Carolina prisons on Thursday after completing the tail end of their sentences for pleas to voluntary manslaughter.
Molly Martens Corbett left the North Carolina Correctional Institution for Women in Raleigh on Thursday morning while her father, Thomas Martens, was released from the Caldwell Correctional Center in Lenoir, the state Department of Adult Correction said in an email.
They each served about seven more months behind bars after additional sentencing in November, soon after they entered plea agreements. The pair otherwise had been poised to go back on trial late last year, after the North Carolina Supreme Court in 2021 reversed their 2017 second-degree murder convictions and ordered a new trial.
The two are now subject to one year of post-release supervision, which will be served in Tennessee, correction department spokesperson Keith Acree said.
Corbett’s husband, Jason Corbett, died at the home he shared with his wife in a golf course community in Davidson County, about 110 miles (175 kilometers) west of Raleigh.
Investigators said Molly Corbett and Martens, a former FBI agent, used an aluminum baseball bat and brick paver to kill Jason Corbett, fracturing his skull and causing injuries to his arm, legs and torso. Defense attorneys have said the two were acting in self-defense and that they feared for their lives during a struggle. His death and the resulting legal fight received intense media coverage in Ireland, as well as an episode on a U.S. true-crime show.
Each had previously been sentenced to 20 to 25 years in prison for the murder convictions. They were released on bond weeks after the Supreme Court decision.
Corbett pleaded no contest to voluntary manslaughter on Oct. 30 and her father pleaded guilty. While a Davidson County trial judge sentenced them to spend between 51 and 74 months in prison, they served much less in part because of credits for their previous time in prison.
Jason and Molly Corbett met in 2008 when Molly Corbett worked as an au pair, caring for two children from Jason Corbett’s first marriage. His first wife had died of an asthma attack in 2006.
In ordering a new trial, the state Supreme Court pointed to omitted statements that the two children had made during a medical evaluation soon after the death that indicated their father had been abusive in the home. Prosecutors alleged the statements were not reliable and that both children later recanted. The trial judge excluded the statements from being entered into the trial.
Jason Corbett’s children spoke at last year’s sentencing hearing.
Missouri
Records expunged for couple who waved guns at protesters. They want guns back
ST. LOUIS (AP) — A judge has expunged the misdemeanor convictions of a St. Louis couple who waved guns at racial injustice protesters outside their mansion in 2020. Now they want their guns back.
Attorneys Mark and Patricia McCloskey filed a request in January to have the convictions wiped away. Judge Joseph P. Whyte wrote in an order Wednesday that the purpose of an expungement is to give people who have rehabilitated themselves a second chance, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported. City prosecutors and police opposed the expungements.
Immediately after the judge’s ruling, Mark McCloskey demanded that the city return the two guns seized as part of his 2021 guilty plea to misdemeanor assault. Republican Gov. Mike Parson pardoned the couple weeks after the plea.
“It’s time for the city to cough up my guns,” he told the Post-Dispatch.
If it doesn’t, he said, he’ll file a lawsuit.
The McCloskeys said they felt threatened by the protesters, who were passing their home in June 2020 on their way to demonstrate in front of the mayor’s house nearby. It was one of hundreds of demonstrations around the country after the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. The couple also said the group was trespassing on a private street.
Mark McCloskey emerged from his home with an AR-15-style rifle, and Patricia McCloskey waved a semi-automatic pistol.
Oregon
Man pleads not guilty to killing 3 women and dumping bodies
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — A man accused of killing three women last year in the Portland, Oregon, area and dumping their bodies has pleaded not guilty to all the charges.
Jesse Lee Calhoun’s attorney entered the pleas Thursday to three counts of second-degree murder and three counts of abuse of a corpse in the deaths of Charity Lynn Perry, 24; Bridget Leanne Webster, 31; and Joanna Speaks, 32, news outlets reported. He did not speak during the arraignment in Multnomah County Circuit Court.
Perry and Webster were found in Oregon, while Speaks was found in an abandoned barn in southwestern Washington.
Their bodies were found over several months starting in February 2023 — in wooded areas, in a culvert and under a bridge — in a roughly 100-mile (160-kilometer) radius, sparking concern that a serial killer might be targeting young women in the region. Speaks’ body was found in southwest Washington, in April 2023, but investigators have said they believe she was killed in the Portland area.
Police and prosecutors haven’t said what evidence they have linking Calhoun to the deaths. The deaths of two other women during that time period are still being investigated, the Multnomah County District Attorney’s Office has said.
The families of the three women have told reporters they struggled with addiction or mental health issues.
Calhoun, 39, was arrested in June 2023 on unrelated parole warrants and incarcerated at the Snake River Correctional Center in eastern Oregon. He was indicted in May in the women’s deaths. The Multnomah County jail on Wednesday listed Calhoun on its roster, indicating he had been transferred to Portland.
The indictment came weeks before Calhoun was due to be released from state prison, where he was returned last year to finish serving a four-year term for assaulting a police officer, trying to strangle a police dog, burglary and other charges.
He was initially released in 2021, a year early, because he was among a group of people in custody who helped fight devastating wildfires in 2020. Gov. Tina Kotek revoked the commutation, which was issued by her predecessor, Kate Brown, last year when police began investigating him in the deaths.
Even if Brown hadn’t commuted Calhoun’s sentence, he would have been released before the deaths occurred.
Court ruling will allow student housing at UC Berkeley’s People’s Park
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — People’s Park in Berkeley, which since the Vietnam War has been a site for protests and counterculture movements, can be converted into student housing for the University of California, the state Supreme Court ruled Thursday, capping a yearslong legal fight over the landmark.
The court ruled that a new law enacted in 2023 invalidates the claims by two local organizations that sued the school, saying more students living in downtown Berkeley would add noise pollution to an already dense area.
Because of the new law, which “all parties have effectively acknowledged, this lawsuit poses no obstacle to the development of the People’s Park housing project,” Chief Justice Patricia Guerrero wrote in the unanimous decision.
California is desperate for more housing of all types, including for students at its public universities and colleges. Some students sleep in their cars, crash on friends’ couches, or commute hours to attend class due to limited space in dorms and nearby apartments.
The court noted that Berkeley provides housing to the lowest percentage of students compared to other schools in the UC system. During the 2023-2024 academic year, UC Berkeley housed 9,905 students, about 22% of the university’s 45,699 enrolled students, UC Berkeley spokesperson Kyle Gibson said in an email.
UC Berkeley plans to build a $312 million housing complex for about 1,100 of its students at the nearly 3-acre (1.2-hectare) People’s Park, which it owns. Protests have at times escalated into skirmishes between police and activists.
In 2022, activists broke through an 8-foot (2-meter) chain fence erected around the park as crews began clearing trees to make room for the housing project. In January, police officers in riot gear removed activists from the park as crews began walling off the site with double-stacked shipping containers.
The park was founded in 1969 as part of the era’s free speech and Civil Rights Movement and for decades served as a gathering space for free meals, community gardening and art projects, and was used by homeless people. It turned into both a symbol of resistance and mayhem during a deadly confrontation that year known as “Bloody Thursday,” emboldening then-California Gov. Ronald Reagan to send in 3,000 National Guardsmen for a two-week occupation that evoked images of war in a city that was clamoring for peace in Vietnam.
The university is relieved by the court’s decision and it will turn its attention to resuming construction at the site, Gibson said.
“Our students and unhoused people desperately need the housing components of the project, and the entire community will benefit from the fact that more than 60% of the 2.8-acre site will be revitalized as open park space,” Gibson said in a statement.
Make UC a Good Neighbor and The People’s Park Historic District Advocacy Group filed a lawsuit against the project, saying that the university system should have considered increased noise under the California Environmental Quality Act, or CEQA. They also said there are more appropriate places the university could build, and the park is a rare green space in one of Berkeley’s densest neighborhoods.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom vowed to work with legislators to amend the law after a state appeals court last year ruled against the University of California, saying that it failed to assess the impact of potential noise “from loud student parties” on residential neighborhoods.
In September, Newsom signed a law that amended CEQA to clarify that housing projects do not need to study the noise generated by prospective future residents.
Harvey Smith, president of the People’s Park Historic District Advocacy Group and one of the plaintiffs, said the decision was disappointing but not surprising.
“It’s disappointing because community groups play by the rules and when we win what UC does is go to the Legislature to change the rules,” Smith said.
“Community groups don’t have the deep pockets or powerful connections UC does,” he added.
North Carolina
Woman and her dad complete prison sentences for death of her Irish husband
RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — The wife of an Irish businessman who was beaten to death in 2015 and the woman’s father were released from separate North Carolina prisons on Thursday after completing the tail end of their sentences for pleas to voluntary manslaughter.
Molly Martens Corbett left the North Carolina Correctional Institution for Women in Raleigh on Thursday morning while her father, Thomas Martens, was released from the Caldwell Correctional Center in Lenoir, the state Department of Adult Correction said in an email.
They each served about seven more months behind bars after additional sentencing in November, soon after they entered plea agreements. The pair otherwise had been poised to go back on trial late last year, after the North Carolina Supreme Court in 2021 reversed their 2017 second-degree murder convictions and ordered a new trial.
The two are now subject to one year of post-release supervision, which will be served in Tennessee, correction department spokesperson Keith Acree said.
Corbett’s husband, Jason Corbett, died at the home he shared with his wife in a golf course community in Davidson County, about 110 miles (175 kilometers) west of Raleigh.
Investigators said Molly Corbett and Martens, a former FBI agent, used an aluminum baseball bat and brick paver to kill Jason Corbett, fracturing his skull and causing injuries to his arm, legs and torso. Defense attorneys have said the two were acting in self-defense and that they feared for their lives during a struggle. His death and the resulting legal fight received intense media coverage in Ireland, as well as an episode on a U.S. true-crime show.
Each had previously been sentenced to 20 to 25 years in prison for the murder convictions. They were released on bond weeks after the Supreme Court decision.
Corbett pleaded no contest to voluntary manslaughter on Oct. 30 and her father pleaded guilty. While a Davidson County trial judge sentenced them to spend between 51 and 74 months in prison, they served much less in part because of credits for their previous time in prison.
Jason and Molly Corbett met in 2008 when Molly Corbett worked as an au pair, caring for two children from Jason Corbett’s first marriage. His first wife had died of an asthma attack in 2006.
In ordering a new trial, the state Supreme Court pointed to omitted statements that the two children had made during a medical evaluation soon after the death that indicated their father had been abusive in the home. Prosecutors alleged the statements were not reliable and that both children later recanted. The trial judge excluded the statements from being entered into the trial.
Jason Corbett’s children spoke at last year’s sentencing hearing.
Missouri
Records expunged for couple who waved guns at protesters. They want guns back
ST. LOUIS (AP) — A judge has expunged the misdemeanor convictions of a St. Louis couple who waved guns at racial injustice protesters outside their mansion in 2020. Now they want their guns back.
Attorneys Mark and Patricia McCloskey filed a request in January to have the convictions wiped away. Judge Joseph P. Whyte wrote in an order Wednesday that the purpose of an expungement is to give people who have rehabilitated themselves a second chance, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported. City prosecutors and police opposed the expungements.
Immediately after the judge’s ruling, Mark McCloskey demanded that the city return the two guns seized as part of his 2021 guilty plea to misdemeanor assault. Republican Gov. Mike Parson pardoned the couple weeks after the plea.
“It’s time for the city to cough up my guns,” he told the Post-Dispatch.
If it doesn’t, he said, he’ll file a lawsuit.
The McCloskeys said they felt threatened by the protesters, who were passing their home in June 2020 on their way to demonstrate in front of the mayor’s house nearby. It was one of hundreds of demonstrations around the country after the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. The couple also said the group was trespassing on a private street.
Mark McCloskey emerged from his home with an AR-15-style rifle, and Patricia McCloskey waved a semi-automatic pistol.
Oregon
Man pleads not guilty to killing 3 women and dumping bodies
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — A man accused of killing three women last year in the Portland, Oregon, area and dumping their bodies has pleaded not guilty to all the charges.
Jesse Lee Calhoun’s attorney entered the pleas Thursday to three counts of second-degree murder and three counts of abuse of a corpse in the deaths of Charity Lynn Perry, 24; Bridget Leanne Webster, 31; and Joanna Speaks, 32, news outlets reported. He did not speak during the arraignment in Multnomah County Circuit Court.
Perry and Webster were found in Oregon, while Speaks was found in an abandoned barn in southwestern Washington.
Their bodies were found over several months starting in February 2023 — in wooded areas, in a culvert and under a bridge — in a roughly 100-mile (160-kilometer) radius, sparking concern that a serial killer might be targeting young women in the region. Speaks’ body was found in southwest Washington, in April 2023, but investigators have said they believe she was killed in the Portland area.
Police and prosecutors haven’t said what evidence they have linking Calhoun to the deaths. The deaths of two other women during that time period are still being investigated, the Multnomah County District Attorney’s Office has said.
The families of the three women have told reporters they struggled with addiction or mental health issues.
Calhoun, 39, was arrested in June 2023 on unrelated parole warrants and incarcerated at the Snake River Correctional Center in eastern Oregon. He was indicted in May in the women’s deaths. The Multnomah County jail on Wednesday listed Calhoun on its roster, indicating he had been transferred to Portland.
The indictment came weeks before Calhoun was due to be released from state prison, where he was returned last year to finish serving a four-year term for assaulting a police officer, trying to strangle a police dog, burglary and other charges.
He was initially released in 2021, a year early, because he was among a group of people in custody who helped fight devastating wildfires in 2020. Gov. Tina Kotek revoked the commutation, which was issued by her predecessor, Kate Brown, last year when police began investigating him in the deaths.
Even if Brown hadn’t commuted Calhoun’s sentence, he would have been released before the deaths occurred.
