National Roundup

New York
DA: Nun accused of theft after $100K is stolen

HOLLEY, N.Y. (AP) — Authorities say a nun faces grand larceny charges after more than $100,000 was stolen from two western New York churches where she worked.
Orleans County District Attorney Joseph Cardone tells The Buffalo News that Sister Mary Anne Rapp is scheduled to appear in Kendall Town Court on Monday night to answer to the charges.
The newspaper reports that the money was stolen from Catholic churches in Holley and Kendall, rural parishes between Buffalo and Rochester.
No other details have been released.
The nun’s attorney, James Harrington, told the newspaper he couldn’t comment on the case.
The attorney for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Buffalo says Sister Mary Anne was placed on administrative leave more than a year ago after an audit conducted by the diocese turned up irregularities.

North Carolina
Hearing airs sex crimes in case against general

FORT BRAGG, N.C. (AP) — U.S. Army prosecutors are charging a general with sex crimes against five women, including four military subordinates and a civilian.
The first details of the charges filed in September emerged at a military justice hearing Monday for Brig. Gen. Jeffrey Sinclair at Fort Bragg in North Carolina.
Sinclair is charged with a long list of crimes including forcible sodomy, wrongful sexual conduct, engaging in inappropriate relationships and misusing a government travel charge.
Prosecutors alleged Monday in a hearing on evidence in the case that the crimes happened in places including Iraq, Afghanistan and Germany.
Sinclair’s attorney asked for the charges to be thrown out, arguing that prosecutors had read confidential emails between the general and his defense.

Massachusetts
Mobster Bulger reportedly taken to Bos. hospital

BOSTON (AP) — Mobster James “Whitey” Bulger was taken to a Boston hospital after complaining of chest pains at the prison where he is awaiting trial for his alleged role in 19 murders, Massachusetts officials say.
Bulger, 83, the former leader of the Winter Hill Gang, was hospitalized Sunday for chest pains at Boston Medical Center, according to media outlets, although a hospital spokeswoman told The Associated Press she had no information on any patient named Bulger.
Plymouth Fire Department battalion chief Kevin Murphy told The Boston Globe that firefighters responded to the Plymouth County Correctional Facility at 1:48 a.m. Sunday and took Bulger to Boston Medical Center. Murphy refused to comment when contacted by the AP.
WBUR-FM in Boston first reported that Bulger was hospitalized for chest pains, citing unnamed law enforcement sources.
The U.S. attorney’s office, the U.S. Marshals Service, and Bulger attorney Hank Brennan declined to comment.
Bulger’s trial is scheduled to begin in March, but his lawyers have said they cannot be ready by then because they are reviewing more than 300,000 documents turned over by prosecutors. Last week, they asked that the trial be moved to November 2013.
Bulger’s lawyers say in court papers filed Friday that the current trial date infringes on Bulger’s constitutional rights to effective counsel and due process.
Bulger’s lead attorney, J.W. Carney Jr., has repeatedly complained that prosecutors have turned over documents in a disorganized fashion. Prosecutors have accused Carney of using stall tactics.
Bulger fled Boston in 1994 and was captured last year in Santa Monica, Calif.
The defense says Bulger was an FBI informant who had immunity to commit crimes while he was providing information about the Mafia, his gang’s main rival. In court papers filed this week, Carney identified former U.S. Attorney Jeremiah O’Sullivan as the federal official Bulger claims gave him immunity. O’Sullivan died in 2009.
Prosecutors say Bulger never received immunity from anyone.

Washington
Court: Officers may have to pay fees in lawsuit

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court says a South Carolina sheriff’s office can be held liable for attorneys’ fees for stopping abortion protesters in South Carolina who wanted to hold up signs showing aborted fetuses.
Justices on Monday reversed a decision saying the Greenwood County sheriff’s office was not required to pay attorney’s fees in a lawsuit brought by Steven Lefemine and Columbia Christians for Life. The group was told by officers they couldn’t protest with their signs in November 2005. A federal judge agreed that the sheriff was wrong, but did not award damages or lawyer’s fees.
The justices threw out that decision without hearing arguments, saying the legal decision that officers could not stop the protesters “supported the award of attorney’s fees.” The case now goes back to the lower courts.

Virginia
Parents can’t collect sperm after man’s death

ROANOKE, Va. (AP) — A Roanoke couple who wanted to collect their son’s sperm after he died wasn’t able to do so.
Jerri and Rufus McGill had wanted grandchildren. But Jerri McGill tells The Roanoke Times that there wasn’t enough time to get a court order so doctors could extract and freeze their son’s sperm.
Nineteen-year-old Rufus McGill II, who had been in critical condition since a traffic accident on Oct. 14, died Thursday.

Georgia
Court to allow hone records in murder trial

ATLANTA (AP) — The Supreme Court of Georgia has upheld a lower court’s ruling, allowing cell phone records to be allowed in the murder trial of Michael Jason Registe, who is accused of killing two college athletes in Georgia and then fleeing to a Caribbean island.
Authorities say Registe eluded police for more than a year after he was charged in July 2007 with shooting two Columbus State University athletes in a truck outside an apartment complex. Authorities say 21-year-old Randy Newton Jr. and 20-year-old Bryan Kilgore were shot execution-style.
In an opinion released Monday, the state’s supreme court said cell phone records that prosecutors maintain tie Registe to the crimes will be allowed as evidence in his Muscogee County trial.
Registe’s attorneys had sought to exclude the records, saying they were seized unlawfully.’