National Roundup

Pennsylvania
Sisters ejected from mall over cancer hats
KING OF PRUSSIA, Pa. (AP) — Three sisters say they were kicked out of a suburban Philadelphia mall after refusing to remove profanity-laden hats expressing their hatred of breast cancer.
Zakia Clark and Tasha Clark had been at the King of Prussia Mall on Sunday shopping for funeral dresses with a third sister, Makia Underwood. Their mother died last week after battling the disease.
Zakia and Tasha Clark were wearing hats that had a one-word profanity — with a pink ribbon substituting for the third letter — before the word cancer. Zakia Clark says it’s the only word strong enough to defeat the word ‘cancer.’
Security asked them to remove the hats. They were ejected after refusing.
Mall manager Robert Hart says he sends condolences to the sisters, but that the mall is a family place where the code of conduct does not tolerate profanity.

Ohio
Teen pleads not guilty in deaths of two brothers
OTTAWA, Ohio (AP) — A 17-year-old boy charged with killing two teenage brothers in northwest Ohio has pleaded not guilty.
Michael Aaron Fay entered the pleas during an arraignment Tuesday in Putnam County Juvenile Court. He’s charged with delinquency in connection with aggravated murder.
Fay is accused of killing 17-year-old Blake Romes and 14-year-old Blaine Romes in their Ottawa trailer May 9.
An Amber Alert for all three teens was issued that day after the mother of the Romes teens discovered a gun and blood inside a trailer where the three boys lived with their mothers.
Fay told officers that the Romes brothers were dead and pointed authorities to their bodies after he was found with a stolen car in Columbus.
A prosecutor said both victims were shot once in the head.

New York
Judge: Renting apartments using Airbnb site illegal
NEW YORK (AP) — A judge has ruled that a New Yorker who rented his apartment on a popular traveler site broke the law.
East Village condo owner Nigel Warren was ordered to pay a $2,400 penalty for subletting his apartment to a Russian tourist in December on the Airbnb.com website.
The judge says he broke the law because he rented it for fewer than 30 days and wasn’t home while the tourist occupied it.
Rental agreements are legal under state law only if the “host” remains home during the rental period.
Airbnb aided Warren’s defense. It’s lobbying Albany to change the 2011 law. Warren said he hoped the ruling wouldn’t hurt Airbnb.
The New York Post reports that as of Tuesday, 22,704 New York City rentals were listed on the Airbnb site.

California
Prosecutors seek retrial in official corruption case
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Los Angeles County prosecutors said Tuesday they’ll seek to retry five former officials in the city of Bell who were accused of corruption and overpaying themselves with public funds.
Prosecutors want the retrial after jurors in March issued a mixed verdict for former officials in the scandal-plagued Los Angeles suburb, and the judge declared a mistrial on some counts, said Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office spokeswoman Jean Guccione.
The former mayor and four former Bell council members were convicted of stealing city funds by creating a bogus trash board to help pad their part-time salaries to nearly $100,000. However, the panel of seven women and five men acquitted the defendants of some counts and were deadlocked 9-3 in favor of guilt on others.
Prosecutors said city officials should have been earning closer to $8,000 a year, but they boosted their pay by serving on boards that hardly ever met and nearly bankrupted the city. One in six of Bell’s 40,000 residents lives in poverty.
The case involving the modest 2 1/2-square-mile city became a national symbol of  greed.
Deliberations had dragged on for 19 days — almost as long as trial testimony — and the jury seemed troubled at times during the case.
Right as deliberations were beginning, a tearful juror claimed she was being harassed by other members, and was excused for having her daughter research juror coercion. She was replaced by an alternate.
Notes from other jurors later asked to withdraw a guilty verdict and hinted at bad behavior among members before a judge declared a mistrial on about half of the counts of misappropriating public funds.
“It seems to me all hell has broken loose,” Superior Court Judge Kathleen Kennedy had told attorneys after receiving the final juror note.
Another former official was acquitted of all charges. Guccione says prosecutors don’t plan to challenge that decision.

Vermont
Prison death case lands in the State Supreme Court
MONTPELIER, Vt. (AP) — Lawyers have argued before the Vermont Supreme Court over who should pay for the defense against any claims made in the 2009 death of a woman who was denied medication in jail.
Ashley Ellis of Castleton died two days after arriving at the St. Albans jail for a 30-day sentence. Officials say the 23-year-old Ellis wasn’t given medicine to treat a heart condition related to an eating disorder.
The Rutland Herald reports Ellis’ estate reached a settlement with a company providing medical services inside prisons.
The estate also sued the state Corrections Department. But the department had argued the company, not the state, has a duty to defend the department in court.
The company would be indemnified from further claims under an agreement.

Minnesota
$400,000 paid to settle lawsuit on  inmate seizure
ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) — The Minnesota Department of Corrections will pay $400,000 to settle a lawsuit filed by the family of a mentally ill inmate who died at the state prison in Rush City.
Prison medical records show 27-year-old Xavius Scullark-Johnson died in 2010 after being left alone in a cell while suffering a series of seizures. He suffered from schizophrenia and a seizure disorder. Corrections records indicate a senior nurse who examined Scullark-Johnson before ending her shift was suspended for five days without pay for violating nursing protocol for dealing with seizures.
Corrections Commissioner Tom Roy says the settlement allows both parties to find closure to a case that could have gone unresolved for years.
The Star Tribune reports the family is still pursuing a neglect lawsuit against Corizon, the company hired by the state to provide medical care to its prisoners.