Court Digest

Connecticut
DNA match leads to arrest in 1984 kidnapping, sexual assault

HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — A new DNA database match has led to the arrest of a man in connection with a 1984 kidnapping and sexual assault in Connecticut, police announced Thursday.

Avon police said they served an arrest warrant on George Legere, 73, at the Hampden County jail in Springfield, Massachusetts, where authorities arrested him on May 19.

Legere is charged with three counts of first-degree kidnapping in the abduction and sexual assault of a person found in a vehicle slumped over the steering wheel with the horn sounding in Avon at about 4 a.m. on April 13, 1984.

It wasn’t clear if Legere has a lawyer who could respond to the allegations. He was detained on a $675,000 bond and is scheduled to be arraigned in Hartford Superior Court on Friday.

Police in Avon, about 10 miles (16 kilometers) west of Hartford, said DNA was collected from the 1984 crime, but the state crime lab was not able to identify a suspect at the time. The DNA information was entered into a national database.

Police said they were recently notified by the crime lab that a match came up between the DNA evidence and Legere’s DNA. Authorities said Legere had a DNA sample taken from him when he was released from a prison sentence in Massachusetts.

Legere has a criminal record that includes arrests and convictions in 31 separate cases, including convictions for sexual assault and kidnapping, Avon police said.

“The Avon Police Department would like to acknowledge the diligent work done by the officers and detectives who followed up on numerous leads and suspects in 1984,” police said in a statement.
“Their hard work resulted in the solving of this case 37 years later.”

Police also credited present-day detectives, and added “the victim in this case, who despite having to constantly relive this trauma, was fully supportive of our efforts to bring this case to conclusion.”
Authorities could not file sexual assault charges because the statute of limitations expired. There is no statute of limitations for kidnapping in Connecticut.


New Hampshire
Attacked lawyer: ‘the blows came raining down on my head’

Defense lawyer Michael Davidow remembers telling his client, who was jailed on attempted murder charges, information that he didn’t like — then getting hit by him in the middle of the conversation.

Moments later, “the blows came raining down on my head, over and over, one after the other,” Davidow said Thursday at the sentencing for his former client, Dale Holloway, who pleaded guilty to the assault and received 7 1/2 to 15 years in state prison in a plea agreement. Holloway has a criminal record that includes assault convictions and now awaits trial on charges that he shot and wounded two people at a wedding.

Davidow, who needed months to recover from that visit on Oct. 21, 2019, described what happened as a savage assault “on my head and my face, my mouth and my eyes. And incredibly, it ended when he chose to end it. The guards were never able to come and stop it.”

He remembered feeling that his life was flashing before his eyes, the first of several times that day.

“While he was attacking me, I thought my son was going to grow up without his father. I thought that my wife was going to be alone. And those were my final thoughts, as I thought I was going to die on the floor of a locked cell at Valley Street Jail.”

Davidow, who said his head “felt literally like it had been cracked open,” suffered a hemorrhage and some memory loss. He said he won’t go back to the jail and has taken on fewer felony cases as a result.

Holloway, 38, was already accused of shooting and wounding the bride and presiding bishop at a wedding in Pelham days earlier. Authorities said the groom is the father of a man who was charged with killing Holloway’s stepfather.

Holloway’s lawyer, Brian Lee, said Holloway grew up surrounded by violence. He was stabbed and beaten at 15, and lived in a state of paranoia and hypervigilance.

Holloway had met with Davidow before, but knew very little, mainly that Davidow’s firm was representing the man charged with killing Holloway’s stepfather, Lee said.
 

“He’s confused. He’s scared. He perceived a threat to himself and to his family,” Lee said, adding that Holloway’s instincts took over and he struck Davidow.
 

Holloway apologized to Davidow and the court in Manchester.
 

“I just hope that I can get past this situation and move on with my life,” he said.
 

Hillsborough County Superior Court Judge Diane Nicolosi recognized that Holloway was in a heightened emotional state in October 2019, given what happened to his stepfather.
 

She recalled Holloway saying he acted out of fear when Davidow came to see him, thinking he was part of a system that was “going to get you.”
 

But she added, “That is a belief that is so unattached to reality, and it’s kind of scary that you would react in this way.”
 

South Dakota
Plea deal reached in assaults made to fraudulently get drugs

RAPID CITY, S.D. (AP) — A Pine Ridge woman accused of smashing the fingers of her victims with a rock in order to get opioids from their pain prescriptions has reached a plea deal with prosecutors.

Frenchone One Horn, also known as Frenchone Kills In Water, plans to plead guilty Friday at the federal courthouse in Rapid City to health care fraud, fraudulently obtaining drugs and two counts of assault resulting in a serious injury.

One Horn is entering the pleas in connection with two victims after originally being charged with injuring five people. According to the indictment, three of the victims had a finger or two fingers amputated because of their injuries, the  Rapid City Journal  reported.

One Horn injured the hand of a 17-year-old relative in September 2018 in order to obtain pills and then walked the girl to the Indian Health Service Hospital in Pine Ridge where the victim received oxycodone, morphine and other drugs. One Horn took the drugs once they left, ingested some of them and sold the rest, prosecutors said.

One Horn repeated the scheme with her boyfriend in September 2019 when she used a football-sized rock to smash the 34-year-old’s fingers and told him to make up a story about how he hurt himself so he could get pills. The man had one of his fingers amputated after it got infected, the indictment said.

A factual basis document signed by One Horn said a previous boyfriend had earlier injured her, himself and others in order to get prescription drugs from medical providers.

Georgia
Ex-magistrate judge sentenced to 5 years for stealing money

JASPER, Ga. (AP) — A former magistrate judge in north Georgia has been sentenced to five years in prison for stealing county and state money.

Senior Superior Court Judge Tami Colston on Thursday sentenced William “Allen” Wigington to five years in prison. State Attorney General Chris Carr said Wigington went to “extreme lengths” to defraud taxpayers.

Wigington was chief magistrate judge in Pickens County until he resigned last year.

He pleaded guilty in April to 44 felony counts and five misdemeanor counts. Those charges said Wigington misused a government credit card, falsified documents to cover up the thefts, and stole county money to repay money belonging to a masonic lodge that Wigington had used to pay his own credit card bill.

Carr said an investigation found Wigington was ordering thousands of dollars of personal items from Amazon, including a Nintendo Switch gaming system, Apple earbuds, and an Apple watch.

The investigation also found Wigington paid for personal hotel stays, sandals, skin care products and toys. In one instance he pocketed $200 that a lawyer had given him to buy a suit for a student in a mock trial program and then used his state credit card to buy a suit for the student and one for himself. In other instances, he paid for work-related travel with county money and then pocketed state money that was supposed to be used to reimburse the county.

Wigington was also sentenced to 10 years of probation.

Wigington’s wife had also been indicted, but Carr spokesperson Katie Byrd said those charges were dismissed.

New Mexico
Lawyer: Man denies threatening to kill president

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — A defense lawyer for a New Mexico man accused of threatening to kill President Joe Biden says texts the man sent were taken out of context and were “simply political expression.”

According to court records, 39-year-old John Benjamin Thornton of Las Cruces was arrested Monday and a criminal complaint alleged he violated federal law by threatening in communications in interstate commerce to injure another person.

Thornton’s phone was in Las Cruces when the texts were sent May 18 to people in Florida and Texas, the complaint said.

Bernadette Sedillo, a assistant public defender representing Thornton, said Thursday that he denies allegations made in the complaint by an FBI agent.

“It is very early in the case, but once the facts bear out, they will show a completely different picture,” Sedillo told The Associated Press via email.

“The messages attached to the criminal complaint are a few sporadic texts out of many that are out of context,” Sedillo added. “This was simply political expression and was never a true threat made by Mr. Thornton.”


Massachusetts
2 months in prison for dad who paid $40K in ACT cheat scheme

BOSTON (AP) — The founder of a private equity firm who paid $40,000 to have someone secretly correct his daughter’s ACT exam answers was sentenced Thursday to two months in prison for his role in the college admissions bribery scheme.

Before the judge handed down his sentence, Mark Hauser cried as he asked for forgiveness and said had been driven only by a desire to help his youngest daughter, who has struggled throughout her life with serious medical issues.

“I know medical challenges are not an excuse,” Hauser said during the hearing held in Boston’s federal court. “I was in a really bad place with her struggles. I was not trying to establish prestige for myself or for my daughter. My only concern was to help her catch her breath,” he said.

Lawyers for “Full House” actress Lori Loughlin and her fashion designer husband, Mossimo Giannulli, said during their sentencing hearings last year  that Hauser was the one who recommended they work with the ringleader of the college bribery scheme, Rick Singer. Hauser used to serve as chairman of the board of the Los Angeles high school attended by Loughlin and Giannulli’s daughters.

The case against Hauser and his plea agreement was made public hours after the sentencing hearings for Loughlin and Giannulli last August. Giannulli was released from prison last month  after being sentenced to five months for paying $500,000 to get their two daughters into the University of Southern California as bogus crew recruits. Loughlin served two months behind bars.

In addition to his private equity firm, Hauser also ran an insurance company. Days after prosecutors announced Hauser’s plea deal, Florida-based insurance company Brown & Brown announced that they were backing out of a deal to buy Hauser’s insurance firm for $187 million.

Hauser, who splits his time between Cincinnati, Ohio, and Los Angeles, paid Singer $40,000 to have someone pose as his daughter’s ACT proctor and secretly correct her answers, authorities said in court documents. The proctor, Mark Riddell, has also pleaded guilty in the scheme. Riddell got Hauser’s daughter a score of 31 out of 36, prosecutors have said.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Justin O’Connell had asked for two months behind bars, saying Hauser’s actions were not a momentary lapse in judgement but a concerted effort to use his privilege to give his daughter a leg up in the admissions process.

Hauser’s lawyer had sought probation instead of prison time. Hauser pleaded guilty in September  to one count of conspiracy to commit mail fraud and honest services mail fraud.