National Roundup . . .

Ohio
Prosecutor won’t release grand jury transcripts
CLEVELAND (AP) — The Cuyahoga (ky-uh-HOH’-guh) County prosecutor has told the NAACP in Cleveland, Ohio, that the law doesn’t allow him to release transcripts from the grand jury that voted not to indict two white police officers for the fatal shooting of a 12-year-old black child playing with a pellet gun.

Prosecutor Tim McGinty, in a letter to the civil rights group released Wednesday night, says his office will continue to provide reports and documents about lethal uses of force by police but by law cannot release grand jury transcripts in the Tamir Rice case. The grand jury voted last week not to indict the officers for the November 2014 shooting outside a recreation center.

NAACP officials have said they will go to court to seek release of the transcripts if McGinty refused.

Pennsylvania
Grenade sent to courthouse was gift for sheriff
BEAVER, Pa. (AP) — A grenade that led authorities to evacuate a Pennsylvania county courthouse was a gag gift intended for the newly elected sheriff.

Instead, Beaver County Sheriff Tony Guy ordered the evacuation as a precaution after the box was X-rayed as part of Wednesday’s incoming mail.

Authorities say the sender is friends with the sheriff and had clearly labeled the box with his return address. District Attorney David Lozier says the man was upset that the gift caused such problems and cooperated with investigators.

The grenade was harmless. It was mounted on a plaque with a sign reading, “Complaint department. Take a number.” A numbered plastic ticket was attached to the grenade’s pin.

The courthouse was evacuated for about 80 minutes.

California
Judge: Monkey cannot own selfie photos copyright
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A macaque monkey who took now-famous selfie photographs cannot be declared the copyright owner of the photos, a federal judge said Wednesday.

U.S. District Judge William Orrick said in federal court in San Francisco that “while Congress and the president can extend the protection of law to animals as well as humans, there is no indication that they did so in the Copyright Act.”

The lawsuit filed last year by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals sought a court order allowing PETA to represent the monkey and let it to administer all proceeds from the photos for the benefit of the monkey, which it identified as 6-year-old Naruto, and other crested macaques living in a reserve on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi.

The photos were taken during a 2011 trip to Sulawesi with an unattended camera owned by British nature photographer David Slater, who asked the court to dismiss the case. Slater says the British copyright obtained for the photos by his company, Wildlife Personalities Ltd., should be honored worldwide.

PETA sued Slater and his San Francisco-based self-publishing company Blurb, which published a book called “Wildlife Personalities” that includes the “monkey selfie” photos.

The photos have been widely distributed elsewhere by outlets, including Wikipedia, which contend that no one owns the copyright to the images because they were taken by an animal, not a person.

Slater described himself as a nature photographer who is deeply concerned about animal welfare in court documents and said it should up to the U.S. Congress and not a federal court to decide whether copyright law applies to non-human animals.

Jeff Kerr, general counsel for PETA, said the organization will continue fighting for the monkey’s rights.


Pennsylvania
Suit: Wal-Mart sold ammo used in three killings
PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Families of three people killed in Pennsylvania last year are suing Wal-Mart, alleging the retail giant sold ammunition used in the slayings to a man who was underage and drunk.

Wal-Mart employees in Easton were negligent in selling .38-caliber ammunition to 20-year-old Robert Jordain, failing to ensure he was at least 21 as required by law, the suit said.

Jordain and two others have been charged with homicide in the July 5 deaths of a man in Easton and a man and a woman in nearby Allentown. The man who pulled the handgun’s trigger that day is accused of killing seven people in two states.

Wal-Mart said it will defend itself from the wrongful-death suit, which was filed last week in the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas.

The ammunition that Jordain bought could have been used in either a handgun or a rifle, and “the law allows for rifle ammunition to be purchased by someone 18 years of age,” Randy Hargrove, the chain’s director of national media relations, said in a statement.

Indiana
Judge overturns 3 men’s murder convictions
GOSHEN, Ind. (AP) — Three northern Indiana men sentenced to 50 or more years in prison before the Indiana Supreme Court overturned their murder convictions could be out of prison before the end of the year after being sentenced on felony burglary charges.

Elkhart Circuit Judge Terry Shewmaker on Thursday sentenced Levi Sparks to nine years in prison and Blake Layman and Anthony Sharp to 10 years. The men’s attorneys say because of time served and credit for good behavior, they could be released from prison this year.

Authorities say the men were trying to burglarize an Elkhart home in 2012 when the homeowner opened fire, killing an accomplice. They originally were convicted under a state law that allows murder charges if someone is killed during the commission of another felony.

Pennsylvania
Man pleads to sex-trafficking 4 Ohio runaways
PITTSBURGH (AP) — A western Pennsylvania man has pleaded guilty to sex trafficking four teenage runaways from Ohio who were found in the car he was riding in — along with 8,000 individual dose bags of heroin — during a traffic stop last year.

Forty-one-year-old Robert Middlebrook must return for sentencing before a federal judge on May 9, when he’ll likely face an agreed-upon sentence of 12 years in prison. The judge must approve the sentence at that time.

The Clairton man’s co-defendant, 26-year-old Kiari Day, of Rankin, pleaded guilty in November to helping Middlebrook by teaching the girls how to interact with customers and helping post online prostitution ads. She'll be sentenced in December.

The girls, all 17 or 16, were runaways from the Canton-Akron area.