Washington
Supreme Court rules for Arizona inmate in death penalty case
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court ruled Wednesday for a man on Arizona’s death row who wants a new sentencing hearing because jurors in his case were wrongly told that the only way to ensure he would never walk free was to sentence him to death.
The 5-4 decision written by Justice Sonia Sotomayor likely means that John Montenegro Cruz will get a new penalty phase of his trial where it is made clear to jurors that he is ineligible for parole if he is sentenced to life in prison, instead of death.
“I am so gratified by the Court’s decision today. What Arizona has been doing in implementing the death penalty is patently unconstitutional and wrong, and I’m glad to see the Court call them out,” Cruz’s lawyer Neal Katyal said in a statement.
The case is important not only for Cruz, but also for other Arizona death row inmates. Arizona currently has approximately 100 people on its death row and the decision could affect about 30 of them with pending cases.
Cruz had argued that the jury should have been informed he would be ineligible for parole if spared from death and given a life sentence. A judge rejected that request and the state said Cruz failed to make the precise requests he needed to under Supreme Court precedent.
At least one juror has said that had she known that a “life sentence without parole” was an alternative to death, she “would have voted for that option.”
Cruz was convicted of the 2003 murder of a Tucson police officer, Patrick Hardesty. Hardesty and another officer were investigating a hit-and-run accident that led them to Cruz, who attempted to flee and shot Hardesty five times.
A 1994 Supreme Court case, Simmons v. South Carolina, says that in certain death penalty cases, jurors must be told that choosing a life sentence means life without the possibility of parole. That’s required when prosecutors argue that the defendant will pose a threat to society in the future.
Arizona courts refused to apply the decision. In a 2016 case, Lynch v. Arizona, the Supreme Court told Arizona directly that it needed to comply with Simmons. Cruz argued Arizona has continued to defy the high court.
The case is Cruz v. Arizona, 21-846.
California
Prosecutors charge man in killing of Los Angeles bishop
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Prosecutors charged a man Wednesday with killing a Catholic bishop in a crime that stunned Los Angeles religious and immigrant communities.
Auxiliary Bishop David O’Connell, 69, was fatally shot multiple times Saturday in the bedroom of his home in Hacienda Heights, an unincorporated community about 20 miles (30 kilometers) east of downtown Los Angeles.
The suspect, Carlos Medina, is the husband of O’Connell’s housekeeper. Medina had done work at the bishop’s home and was arrested Monday by a SWAT team.
LA County District Attorney George Gascón said Wednesday that Medina is charged with one count of murder with a special allegation that he personally used a firearm.
“Charging Mr. Medina will never repair the tremendous harm that was caused by this callous act, but it does take us one step closer to accountability,” Gascón said.
Medina faces 35 years to life in prison. He appeared in court Wednesday afternoon, and his arraignment was postponed to March 22.
The public defender’s office, which is representing Medina, said in a statement that Medina is presumed innocent “and entitled to a vigorous defense.”
Because the case is so serious, a senior deputy was appointed to handle it, the statement said.
“We are sensitive to the impact this case has had on our community but at the same time caution against any rush to judgment,” the statement said.
O’Connell had been a priest for 45 years and was a native of Ireland, according to Angelus News, the news outlet of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, the nation’s largest. In 2015, Pope Francis named him one of several auxiliary bishops of the archdiocese.
Lt. Michael Modica of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, who is leading the homicide investigation, said Medina told detectives of several reasons for the violence, “and none of them made any sense to investigators,” so the motive remains unclear.
Previous reports that Medina said O’Connell had owed him money appear to be incorrect, Modica said.
Georgia
Human bones in car matched to man missing since 1976
LAGRANGE, Ga. (AP) — Human bones found inside a submerged car near the Georgia-Alabama state line in 2021 have been matched to a college student who had been missing for 47 years, according to a Georgia sheriff.
Kyle Clinkscales, 22, of LaGrange, vanished in January 1976 after leaving the Georgia club where he worked as a bartender to return to school at Auburn University in neighboring Alabama.
Investigators got a break in the cold case in December 2021, when someone spotted a car in a murky Alabama creek. The 1974 Ford Pinto pulled from the water belonged to Clinkscales, and some of his belongings were still inside. So were about 50 bones, including part of a skull.
The office of Troup County Sheriff James Woodruff announced in a statement Sunday that forensic tests by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation and the FBI have concluded that the bones found inside the car more than a year ago are Clinkscales’ remains.
“At this time an official report has not been completed or released by the GBI as it relates to a manner of death,” according to the sheriff’s statement.
GBI spokesperson Nelly Miles confirmed Wednesday that investigators have not determined how Clinkscales died or whether foul play was involved.
In 2006, Jimmy Earl Jones pleaded guilty to making false statements to authorities about Clinkscales’ death and was sentenced to four years in prison. Jones had told investigators that Clinkscales was fatally shot by someone else, but he gave conflicting accounts that prosecutors determined were useless to uncovering the truth.
Pete Skandalakis, the former district attorney who prosecuted Jones, said after Clinkscales’ car was found that the “most plausible explanation” for his death was that he accidentally ran off the road.
North Carolina
Mental evaluation ordered for man tied to Lyft driver death
RUTHERFORDTON, N.C. (AP) — A judge has ordered a mental evaluation at the request of the attorney for a man who was arrested in North Carolina while driving the car of a dead Lyft driver from Florida and who is also charged with murder in a separate case.
The order came Wednesday as Florida officials worked to extradite Matthew Scott Flores, who is a person of interest in the death of Lyft driver Gary Levin, WLOS-TV reported.
Flores, 35, appeared in court for a probable cause hearing in Rutherford County, where he was arrested after a vehicle pursuit in multiple counties and charged with a parole violation, being a fugitive, felony speeding to elude arrest, and driving while impaired. His attorney requested the evaluation, and the judge granted it, the station reported.
Flores has also been charged in Hardee County, Florida, with first-degree murder, grand theft auto, possession of a firearm by a felon, and tampering with evidence in the fatal Jan. 24 shooting of Jose Carlos Martinez, 43, in Wauchula, according to court records.
Police were searching for Flores in that case by Jan. 30, when Levin, 74, disappeared after dropping off a customer in Okeechobee, a small city about 70 miles (110 kilometers) east of Wauchula.
Levin’s Kia Stinger was spotted in Miami, Okeechobee and Gainesville, in north Florida, after his disappearance. The vehicle was stopped Feb. 2 in North Carolina, where a U.S. Marshals Service regional task force asked authorities to be on the lookout.
A dead body found in Okeechobee was eventually identified as Levin.
In North Carolina, District Attorney Ted Bell, who represents McDowell and Rutherford counties, told WLOS he plans to settle Flores’ North Carolina charges before he is sent to Florida.
“We’re not a jurisdiction that dismisses charges,” Bell said after the hearing. “We have been in close communication with folks from the state attorney’s office in Florida. We’ll continue to keep close contact with them as things progress in this case, which way is the better way forward is for everybody. I’m not inclined to dismiss him, it just depends on what’s best overall.”
New York
Woman gets 4+ years in jail for harming college schoolmates
NEW YORK (AP) — A New York woman who admitted aiding an ex-convict’s decade-long plot to extort and sexually abuse his daughter’s Sarah Lawrence College schoolmates was sentenced Wednesday to over four years in prison by a judge who called her critical to his scheme.
Isabella Pollok must report to prison by April 25 to begin serving a 4 1/2-year sentence that U.S. District Judge Lewis J. Liman said resulted from her failure to rebel against Lawrence Ray’s crimes.
The judge said Pollok participated in “extreme and sadistic violence” in committing “extremely serious” crimes after being recruited when she was 19 and vulnerable.
“Your role was nonetheless critical,” he said, noting she took steps to prevent a former schoolmate from escaping years of prostitution that produced millions of dollars for Ray. “You were in no means innocent.”
Ray, 63, was sentenced last month to 60 years in prison after his conviction following a trial in which his victims described how he convinced them that they had poisoned him before forcing them to make amends by doing work for him, obeying his commands and paying him cash.
Pollok, who pleaded guilty to a money laundering conspiracy charge last September, stood between her lawyers and sobbed as she briefly spoke before being sentenced.
“I believed and supported someone who controlled me in ways I cannot understand. I will live with the guilt forever,” she said through her tears. “I badly hurt my friends and I am ashamed and deeply regret it. I am truly sorry.”
Pollok, 31, who graduated from the Westchester County school where Ray met most of his victims, faced up to five years in prison.
Her lawyers, who asked that she serve no prison time or receive home detention as an alternative, blamed Ray for manipulating their client after meeting her when she was near-suicidal after a childhood with a mother addicted to drugs and a father and brother in prison.
Liman said the sentence he imposed was in part for Pollok’s cruelty to a woman who Ray had forced into prostitution. The judge said she “gleefully” participated in an assault on the woman in a hotel room where, among other things, she was choked and suffocated with a plastic bag.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Lindsey Keenan said Pollok had played an “active role” in Ray sadistic acts, including handing “him a plastic bag so he could suffocate her college friend.”
Keenan said Pollok also kept a catalogue on her computer of video recordings of her former schoolmates in compromising sexual positions or supposedly admitting they had harmed Ray so she could retrieve the “collateral” if Ray wanted to discipline anyone.
“The next time I see you, you will be in a jumpsuit,” the prosecutor said Pollok once wrote to the woman Ray had forced into prostitution.
Defense attorney David Bertan said Pollok had no lifeline when she met Ray, who brainwashed her.
He noted that the woman forced into prostitution had written to the judge requesting leniency for Pollok.
Bertan said Pollok was rebuilding her life in part by working at an Amazon warehouse.
“I don’t see that a cult victim should have to go to jail for being in a cult,” he said.
Outside court, Bertan said he was disappointed by the sentence.
