Utah
Attorneys ask parole board to keep death sentence for man convicted in 1998 murder
Attorneys for the state of Utah are expected on Tuesday to urge a parole board to deny a death row inmate’s request for his life to be spared ahead of his scheduled Aug. 8 execution.
Representatives of the 49-year-old victim, Claudia Benn, were scheduled to testify before both sides deliver their closing arguments during the commutation hearing at the Utah State Correctional Facility in Salt Lake City.
Inmate Taberon Dave Honie testified Monday that he wasn’t in his “right mind” when he killed his girlfriend’s mother in 1998 after a day of heavy drinking and drug use. He asked the five-member parole board to commute his sentence to life in prison.
Utah Board of Pardons & Parole Chairman Scott Stephenson said a decision would be made “as soon as practical” after the parole board hearing.
Honie told the Utah parole board that he never planned to kill Benn and doesn’t remember much about the killing, which happened when Benn’s three grandchildren — including Honie’s 2-year-old daughter — were in her home.
“I earned my place in prison. What I’m asking today for this board to consider is ‘Would you allow me to exist?’,” he said.
Attorneys for the state have urged the board to reject the request for a lesser sentence. They described his commutation petition as a “deflection of responsibility that never once acknowledges any of the savage acts he inflicted on Claudia or her granddaughters.”
The execution would be Utah’s first since Ronnie Lee Gardner was killed by firing squad in 2010, according to the state Department of Corrections.
Honie was convicted in 1999 of aggravated murder.
After decades of failed appeals, his execution warrant was signed last month despite defense objections to the planned lethal drug combination of the sedative ketamine, the anesthetic fentanyl and potassium chloride to stop his heart. Honie’s attorneys sued, and corrections officials agreed to switch to pentobarbital.
Louisiana
No prison for a nursing home owner who sent 800 residents to ride out a hurricane in squalor
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — A Louisiana businessman who sent more than 800 elderly residents from his seven nursing homes to ride out Hurricane Ida in a crowded, ill-equipped warehouse pleaded no contest to 15 criminal counts Monday and was sentenced to three years of probation.
Bob Dean Jr. also must pay more than $358,000 in restitution to the state health department and more than $1 million as a monetary penalty, but state Attorney General Liz Murrill expressed frustration in a news release that Dean didn’t get any prison time.
“We asked specifically that he be sentenced to a minimum of 5 years in prison, and not be given only probation. I respect our judicial system and that the judge has the ultimate discretion over the appropriate sentence, but I remain of the opinion that Dean should be serving prison time,” her statement said.
Dean, 70, owned seven nursing homes in New Orleans and southeast Louisiana. As Ida approached, Dean moved hundreds of residents into a building in the town of Independence, roughly 70 miles (110 kilometers) northwest of New Orleans.
Authorities said conditions at the warehouse deteriorated rapidly after the powerful storm hit on Aug. 29, 2021. They found ill and elderly bedridden people on mattresses on the wet floor, some crying for help, some lying in their own waste. Civil suits against Dean’s corporation said the ceiling leaked and toilets overflowed at the sweltering warehouse, and there was too little food and water.
Within days after the storm hit, the state reported the deaths of seven of the evacuees, five of them classified as storm-related.
By the time Dean was arrested on state charges in June 2022, he had lost state licenses and federal funding for his nursing homes.
According to Murrill, Dean pleaded no contest to eight counts of cruelty to the infirmed, two counts of obstruction of justice and five counts of Medicaid fraud. Judge Brian Abels sentenced Dean to a total of 20 years in prison, but deferred the sentences in favor of three years of probation. The plea was entered in Tangipahoa, north of New Orleans.
Defendants who plead no contest do not admit guilt but elect not to defend against the charges. They are then subject to being convicted and punished as if there had been a guilty plea.
Ohio
Federal judge tosses voting restrictions on voters with disabilities
CLEVELAND (AP) — A federal judge has struck down part of Ohio’s sweeping 2023 election law, which voting rights groups said restricted people from helping voters with disabilities cast absentee ballots.
Voting advocates argued that the Republican-backed law went too far by prohibiting anyone but a few qualifying family members from helping people with disabilities deliver their ballots, excluding potential helpers such as professional caregivers, roommates, in-laws and grandchildren.
They said the decision issued Monday by a U.S. District Court judge in Cleveland was a victory for democracy and voters.
“We are thrilled that the court ordered the state to stop denying Ohioans with disabilities the opportunity to cast their ballots via assistance from a trusted person of their choice. This is the correct reading of the Voting Rights Act and a validating decision for Ohio voters,” said Freda Levenson, legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio.
The League of Women Voters of Ohio and voter Jennifer Kucera, who was born with a form of muscular dystrophy, filed a lawsuit in December under the Americans with Disabilities Act against the state’s Republican secretary of state, Frank LaRose.
The law, which took effect in April 2023, also made it a felony for anyone who isn’t an election official or mail carrier to possess or return the absentee ballot of a voter with a disability, unless the person assisting them qualified as a close relative.
Republicans who backed the law argued that its provisions were designed to protect election integrity and restore voter confidence at a time of great doubt among GOP voters. The ruling comes as former President Donald Trump and his Republican allies continue to spread false claims that there was widespread fraud in the 2020 presidential election.
Voting rights advocates in Ohio say many voters with disabilities are unable to travel to their polling places and many are unable to access their mailboxes or ballot drop boxes.
Attorneys ask parole board to keep death sentence for man convicted in 1998 murder
Attorneys for the state of Utah are expected on Tuesday to urge a parole board to deny a death row inmate’s request for his life to be spared ahead of his scheduled Aug. 8 execution.
Representatives of the 49-year-old victim, Claudia Benn, were scheduled to testify before both sides deliver their closing arguments during the commutation hearing at the Utah State Correctional Facility in Salt Lake City.
Inmate Taberon Dave Honie testified Monday that he wasn’t in his “right mind” when he killed his girlfriend’s mother in 1998 after a day of heavy drinking and drug use. He asked the five-member parole board to commute his sentence to life in prison.
Utah Board of Pardons & Parole Chairman Scott Stephenson said a decision would be made “as soon as practical” after the parole board hearing.
Honie told the Utah parole board that he never planned to kill Benn and doesn’t remember much about the killing, which happened when Benn’s three grandchildren — including Honie’s 2-year-old daughter — were in her home.
“I earned my place in prison. What I’m asking today for this board to consider is ‘Would you allow me to exist?’,” he said.
Attorneys for the state have urged the board to reject the request for a lesser sentence. They described his commutation petition as a “deflection of responsibility that never once acknowledges any of the savage acts he inflicted on Claudia or her granddaughters.”
The execution would be Utah’s first since Ronnie Lee Gardner was killed by firing squad in 2010, according to the state Department of Corrections.
Honie was convicted in 1999 of aggravated murder.
After decades of failed appeals, his execution warrant was signed last month despite defense objections to the planned lethal drug combination of the sedative ketamine, the anesthetic fentanyl and potassium chloride to stop his heart. Honie’s attorneys sued, and corrections officials agreed to switch to pentobarbital.
Louisiana
No prison for a nursing home owner who sent 800 residents to ride out a hurricane in squalor
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — A Louisiana businessman who sent more than 800 elderly residents from his seven nursing homes to ride out Hurricane Ida in a crowded, ill-equipped warehouse pleaded no contest to 15 criminal counts Monday and was sentenced to three years of probation.
Bob Dean Jr. also must pay more than $358,000 in restitution to the state health department and more than $1 million as a monetary penalty, but state Attorney General Liz Murrill expressed frustration in a news release that Dean didn’t get any prison time.
“We asked specifically that he be sentenced to a minimum of 5 years in prison, and not be given only probation. I respect our judicial system and that the judge has the ultimate discretion over the appropriate sentence, but I remain of the opinion that Dean should be serving prison time,” her statement said.
Dean, 70, owned seven nursing homes in New Orleans and southeast Louisiana. As Ida approached, Dean moved hundreds of residents into a building in the town of Independence, roughly 70 miles (110 kilometers) northwest of New Orleans.
Authorities said conditions at the warehouse deteriorated rapidly after the powerful storm hit on Aug. 29, 2021. They found ill and elderly bedridden people on mattresses on the wet floor, some crying for help, some lying in their own waste. Civil suits against Dean’s corporation said the ceiling leaked and toilets overflowed at the sweltering warehouse, and there was too little food and water.
Within days after the storm hit, the state reported the deaths of seven of the evacuees, five of them classified as storm-related.
By the time Dean was arrested on state charges in June 2022, he had lost state licenses and federal funding for his nursing homes.
According to Murrill, Dean pleaded no contest to eight counts of cruelty to the infirmed, two counts of obstruction of justice and five counts of Medicaid fraud. Judge Brian Abels sentenced Dean to a total of 20 years in prison, but deferred the sentences in favor of three years of probation. The plea was entered in Tangipahoa, north of New Orleans.
Defendants who plead no contest do not admit guilt but elect not to defend against the charges. They are then subject to being convicted and punished as if there had been a guilty plea.
Ohio
Federal judge tosses voting restrictions on voters with disabilities
CLEVELAND (AP) — A federal judge has struck down part of Ohio’s sweeping 2023 election law, which voting rights groups said restricted people from helping voters with disabilities cast absentee ballots.
Voting advocates argued that the Republican-backed law went too far by prohibiting anyone but a few qualifying family members from helping people with disabilities deliver their ballots, excluding potential helpers such as professional caregivers, roommates, in-laws and grandchildren.
They said the decision issued Monday by a U.S. District Court judge in Cleveland was a victory for democracy and voters.
“We are thrilled that the court ordered the state to stop denying Ohioans with disabilities the opportunity to cast their ballots via assistance from a trusted person of their choice. This is the correct reading of the Voting Rights Act and a validating decision for Ohio voters,” said Freda Levenson, legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio.
The League of Women Voters of Ohio and voter Jennifer Kucera, who was born with a form of muscular dystrophy, filed a lawsuit in December under the Americans with Disabilities Act against the state’s Republican secretary of state, Frank LaRose.
The law, which took effect in April 2023, also made it a felony for anyone who isn’t an election official or mail carrier to possess or return the absentee ballot of a voter with a disability, unless the person assisting them qualified as a close relative.
Republicans who backed the law argued that its provisions were designed to protect election integrity and restore voter confidence at a time of great doubt among GOP voters. The ruling comes as former President Donald Trump and his Republican allies continue to spread false claims that there was widespread fraud in the 2020 presidential election.
Voting rights advocates in Ohio say many voters with disabilities are unable to travel to their polling places and many are unable to access their mailboxes or ballot drop boxes.
