Wisconsin
Regulators file complaint against judge who left court to arrest defendant who was in the hospital
MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Wisconsin judicial regulators have filed a misconduct complaint against a Dane County judge who allegedly left court to try to arrest a hospitalized defendant and got into an argument with a defendant in a child sexual assault case.
The state Judicial Commission filed the complaint against Ellen Berz on Thursday, the Wisconsin State Journal reported. The state Supreme Court on Friday ordered Maxine White, chief judge of the state appellate courts, to set up a judicial panel to review the complaint and make discipline recommendations to the justices.
According to the complaint, Berz was presiding over an operating-while-intoxicated case in December 2021. The defendant did not show up in court on the day the trial was set to begin. His attorney told Berz that the defendant had been admitted to a hospital.
Berz had a staff member investigate and learned that he was in a Sun Prairie emergency room. The judge tried to order her bailiff to leave the courthouse and go arrest him, but she was told the bailiff couldn’t leave, according to the complaint.
She then declared that she would retrieve the defendant herself and if something happened to her people would hear about it on the news, according to the complaint. She then left court and began driving to the emergency room with the defendant’s attorney in the passenger seat, the complaint says. No prosecutor was present in the vehicle.
She eventually turned around after the defense attorney warned her that traveling to the hospital was a bad idea because she was supposed to be the neutral decision-maker in the case, according to the complaint. She went back into court and issued a warrant for the defendant’s arrest.
The complaint also alleges that she told a defendant in a child sexual assault case who had asked to delay his trial for a second time that he was playing games and he should “go to the prison and talk to them about all the games you can play.”
When the defendant said that her sarcasm was clear, she told him: “Good. I thought it would be. That’s why I’m saying it to you that way, because I thought you would relate with that.”
The complaint accuses Berz of violating state Supreme Court rules that require judges to act in such a way that promotes public confidence in judicial impartiality, treats people they deal with professionally with patience, dignity and courtesy and perform their duties without bias.
It wasn’t clear if Berz has an attorney. The complaint was addressed to attorney Steven Caya, but it does not say who he represents and Caya did not return a phone message that The Associated Press left at his office on Friday afternoon.
Berz’s judicial assistant said Friday that the judge would not comment on pending litigation. The assistant declined to identify herself.
Kentucky
Grand jury charges daughter with killing woman whose body was dismembered
MOUNT OLIVET, Ky. (AP) — A Kentucky woman who was arrested after police found her mother’s dismembered body in her yard was indicted on a murder charge Monday.
Police were called to a home in Mount Olivet in northern Kentucky on Wednesday and found the body and human remains inside and outside the house. After obtaining a warrant, they arrested Torilena Fields, 32, and charged her with abuse of a corpse, evidence tampering and obstruction.
A grand jury in Robertson County issued an indictment Monday that accused Fields of shooting her mother, Trudy Fields, in the head and stabbing her multiple times before dismembering her corpse. She was also indicted on a charge of killing a dog.
A judge set Fields’ bond at $1.5 million on Monday. Fields does not yet have an attorney, so the judge ordered that she be assigned a public defender, The Lexington Herald-Leader reported.
Trudy Fields was killed between Oct. 8 and 9, the indictment said.
Torilena Fields refused to come out of the house after police found her mother’s body, which was in the backyard near a bloody mattress. Officers called in a special response team and deployed gas inside the house and conversed with Fields using a robot. After several hours, she exited the house with blood on her face, hands and clothing, according to an arrest citation.
While searching the home, officers found a steel pot in the oven containing charred human remains. The indictment said they were Trudy Fields’ remains.
Texas
Court overturns contempt finding, removes judge in foster care suit
A federal appeals court has ordered the removal of a federal judge and overturned her contempt finding and fine against the state of Texas in a lawsuit over the state’s struggling foster care system.
In a ruling released late Friday, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said U.S. District Judge Janis Jack’s contempt ruling and $100,000-per-day fine violates the court’s constitutional limits of power over individual states.
The appeals court also said that Jack had disrespected the state and its attorneys during the long-running case, noting that she at one point remarked, “I don’t know how the state sleeps at night with this. I really don’t.”
“The judge exhibits a sustained pattern, over the course of months and numerous hearings, of disrespect for the defendants and their counsel, but no such attitude toward the plaintiffs’ counsel,” the ruling stated.
The judge’s demeanor exhibits a “high degree of antagonism,” calling into doubt at least “the appearance of fairness” for the state, the ruling added.
An attorney for those who filed the lawsuit alleging that the state routinely fails to investigate complaints of abuse and neglect raised by children in its care said Saturday that the group will appeal the ruling.
“Frankly, this is a sad day for Texas children,” attorney Paul Yetter said in an email.
“For over a decade, Judge Jack pushed the state to fix its broken system,” Yetter said. “She deserves a medal for what she’s done.”
The case began in 2011 with a lawsuit over foster care conditions at the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services, the child welfare arm of Texas Health and Human Services.
Since 2019, court-appointed monitors have released periodic reports on DFPS progress toward eliminating threats to the foster children’s safety.
A report earlier this year cited progress in staff training, but continued weaknesses in responding to investigations into abuse and neglect allegations, including those made by children.
In one case, plaintiffs say, a girl was left in the same, now-closed, residential facility for a year while 12 separate investigations piled up around allegations that she had been raped by a worker there.
Texas has about 9,000 children in permanent state custody for factors that include the loss of caregivers, abuse at home or health needs that parents alone can’t meet.
Massachusetts
Resident who projected Trump sign onto municipal water tower fined
A town in Massachusetts has sent a cease-and-desist letter to a property owner who projected a “Trump 2024” sign onto the side of a municipal water tower.
Officials said the town of Hanson does not endorse candidates, nor does it allow political signs to be displayed on municipal property.
Hanson Town Administrator Lisa Green said the town first became aware that a resident was projecting the image of a political sign supporting Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump from their property onto the Hanson municipal water tower on Oct. 11. Officials have declined to identify the individual.
“This misleads the public into believing that this activity is sanctioned by or condoned by the town,” Green said in a statement Saturday.
The town said that it is issuing a fine of $100 per day until the activity is stopped. Those fines have been accruing, town officials said.
Highway Department employees have positioned a spotlight to shine on the tower, making it harder to see the projection at night. Officials said the resident’s actions could cost a significant amount of taxpayer dollars, including attorney fees, overtime to pay workers to turn the spotlight on and off each day, and the potential for having to rent or purchase stronger lighting equipment.
The $100 per day fine will likely not cover these expenses, officials said.
Vermont
Prosecutor drops an assault charge against sheriff after two mistrials
NORTH HERO, Vt. (AP) — A simple assault charge has been dropped against a Vermont sheriff accused of kicking a shackled detainee twice in the groin after two mistrials in the case, prosecutors said Monday.
A judge declared a second mistrial on Oct. 7 in the case of Franklin County Sheriff John Grismore, who was accused of kicking the detainee when he was captain with the department. A jury also deadlocked at his first trial in July.
Grand Isle State’s Attorney Doug DiSabito said Monday that he reviews any case after a mistrial and decides “whether another trial is a good use of public resources and is in the interests of justice.
“I did that here and have determined that a third trial is not in the public interest. Therefore, I am dismissing the case against Mr. Grismore,” DiSabito said in a statement.
In December 2023, the Vermont Criminal Justice Council found that Grismore violated the state’s use of force policy and voted 15-1 that he permanently lose his law enforcement certification, which means he is unable to enforce the law in Vermont.
If the council had not taken that action, “the right thing in this matter would likely have been to take this to trial again. That will not be happening. This case is now closed,” DiSabito said.
Grismore thanked his family, friends, lawyers and other supporters.
“I am deeply grateful to have emerged from this challenging period, and firmly believe that God’s guidance and support played a crucial role in this journey,” he said in an emailed statement.
North Carolina
Lt. gov. sues CNN over report about posts on porn site
RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson announced a lawsuit Tuesday against CNN over its recent report alleging he made explicit racial and sexual posts on a pornography website’s message board, calling the reporting reckless and defamatory.
The lawsuit, filed in Wake County Superior Court, comes less than four weeks after a television report that led many fellow GOP elected officials and candidates, including presidential nominee Donald Trump, to distance themselves from Robinson’s gubernatorial campaign. Robinson announced the lawsuit at a news conference in Raleigh.
CNN “chose to publish despite knowing or recklessly disregarding that Lt. Gov. Robinson’s data — including his name, date of birth, passwords, and the email address supposedly associated with the NudeAfrica account — were previously compromised by multiple data breaches,” the lawsuit states.
CNN declined to comment, spokesperson Emily Kuhn said in an email.
The CNN report said Robinson left statements over a decade ago on the message board in which, in part, he referred to himself as a “black NAZI,” said he enjoyed transgender pornography, said that he preferred Hitler to then-President Barack Obama, and slammed the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. as “worse than a maggot.”
Regulators file complaint against judge who left court to arrest defendant who was in the hospital
MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Wisconsin judicial regulators have filed a misconduct complaint against a Dane County judge who allegedly left court to try to arrest a hospitalized defendant and got into an argument with a defendant in a child sexual assault case.
The state Judicial Commission filed the complaint against Ellen Berz on Thursday, the Wisconsin State Journal reported. The state Supreme Court on Friday ordered Maxine White, chief judge of the state appellate courts, to set up a judicial panel to review the complaint and make discipline recommendations to the justices.
According to the complaint, Berz was presiding over an operating-while-intoxicated case in December 2021. The defendant did not show up in court on the day the trial was set to begin. His attorney told Berz that the defendant had been admitted to a hospital.
Berz had a staff member investigate and learned that he was in a Sun Prairie emergency room. The judge tried to order her bailiff to leave the courthouse and go arrest him, but she was told the bailiff couldn’t leave, according to the complaint.
She then declared that she would retrieve the defendant herself and if something happened to her people would hear about it on the news, according to the complaint. She then left court and began driving to the emergency room with the defendant’s attorney in the passenger seat, the complaint says. No prosecutor was present in the vehicle.
She eventually turned around after the defense attorney warned her that traveling to the hospital was a bad idea because she was supposed to be the neutral decision-maker in the case, according to the complaint. She went back into court and issued a warrant for the defendant’s arrest.
The complaint also alleges that she told a defendant in a child sexual assault case who had asked to delay his trial for a second time that he was playing games and he should “go to the prison and talk to them about all the games you can play.”
When the defendant said that her sarcasm was clear, she told him: “Good. I thought it would be. That’s why I’m saying it to you that way, because I thought you would relate with that.”
The complaint accuses Berz of violating state Supreme Court rules that require judges to act in such a way that promotes public confidence in judicial impartiality, treats people they deal with professionally with patience, dignity and courtesy and perform their duties without bias.
It wasn’t clear if Berz has an attorney. The complaint was addressed to attorney Steven Caya, but it does not say who he represents and Caya did not return a phone message that The Associated Press left at his office on Friday afternoon.
Berz’s judicial assistant said Friday that the judge would not comment on pending litigation. The assistant declined to identify herself.
Kentucky
Grand jury charges daughter with killing woman whose body was dismembered
MOUNT OLIVET, Ky. (AP) — A Kentucky woman who was arrested after police found her mother’s dismembered body in her yard was indicted on a murder charge Monday.
Police were called to a home in Mount Olivet in northern Kentucky on Wednesday and found the body and human remains inside and outside the house. After obtaining a warrant, they arrested Torilena Fields, 32, and charged her with abuse of a corpse, evidence tampering and obstruction.
A grand jury in Robertson County issued an indictment Monday that accused Fields of shooting her mother, Trudy Fields, in the head and stabbing her multiple times before dismembering her corpse. She was also indicted on a charge of killing a dog.
A judge set Fields’ bond at $1.5 million on Monday. Fields does not yet have an attorney, so the judge ordered that she be assigned a public defender, The Lexington Herald-Leader reported.
Trudy Fields was killed between Oct. 8 and 9, the indictment said.
Torilena Fields refused to come out of the house after police found her mother’s body, which was in the backyard near a bloody mattress. Officers called in a special response team and deployed gas inside the house and conversed with Fields using a robot. After several hours, she exited the house with blood on her face, hands and clothing, according to an arrest citation.
While searching the home, officers found a steel pot in the oven containing charred human remains. The indictment said they were Trudy Fields’ remains.
Texas
Court overturns contempt finding, removes judge in foster care suit
A federal appeals court has ordered the removal of a federal judge and overturned her contempt finding and fine against the state of Texas in a lawsuit over the state’s struggling foster care system.
In a ruling released late Friday, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said U.S. District Judge Janis Jack’s contempt ruling and $100,000-per-day fine violates the court’s constitutional limits of power over individual states.
The appeals court also said that Jack had disrespected the state and its attorneys during the long-running case, noting that she at one point remarked, “I don’t know how the state sleeps at night with this. I really don’t.”
“The judge exhibits a sustained pattern, over the course of months and numerous hearings, of disrespect for the defendants and their counsel, but no such attitude toward the plaintiffs’ counsel,” the ruling stated.
The judge’s demeanor exhibits a “high degree of antagonism,” calling into doubt at least “the appearance of fairness” for the state, the ruling added.
An attorney for those who filed the lawsuit alleging that the state routinely fails to investigate complaints of abuse and neglect raised by children in its care said Saturday that the group will appeal the ruling.
“Frankly, this is a sad day for Texas children,” attorney Paul Yetter said in an email.
“For over a decade, Judge Jack pushed the state to fix its broken system,” Yetter said. “She deserves a medal for what she’s done.”
The case began in 2011 with a lawsuit over foster care conditions at the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services, the child welfare arm of Texas Health and Human Services.
Since 2019, court-appointed monitors have released periodic reports on DFPS progress toward eliminating threats to the foster children’s safety.
A report earlier this year cited progress in staff training, but continued weaknesses in responding to investigations into abuse and neglect allegations, including those made by children.
In one case, plaintiffs say, a girl was left in the same, now-closed, residential facility for a year while 12 separate investigations piled up around allegations that she had been raped by a worker there.
Texas has about 9,000 children in permanent state custody for factors that include the loss of caregivers, abuse at home or health needs that parents alone can’t meet.
Massachusetts
Resident who projected Trump sign onto municipal water tower fined
A town in Massachusetts has sent a cease-and-desist letter to a property owner who projected a “Trump 2024” sign onto the side of a municipal water tower.
Officials said the town of Hanson does not endorse candidates, nor does it allow political signs to be displayed on municipal property.
Hanson Town Administrator Lisa Green said the town first became aware that a resident was projecting the image of a political sign supporting Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump from their property onto the Hanson municipal water tower on Oct. 11. Officials have declined to identify the individual.
“This misleads the public into believing that this activity is sanctioned by or condoned by the town,” Green said in a statement Saturday.
The town said that it is issuing a fine of $100 per day until the activity is stopped. Those fines have been accruing, town officials said.
Highway Department employees have positioned a spotlight to shine on the tower, making it harder to see the projection at night. Officials said the resident’s actions could cost a significant amount of taxpayer dollars, including attorney fees, overtime to pay workers to turn the spotlight on and off each day, and the potential for having to rent or purchase stronger lighting equipment.
The $100 per day fine will likely not cover these expenses, officials said.
Vermont
Prosecutor drops an assault charge against sheriff after two mistrials
NORTH HERO, Vt. (AP) — A simple assault charge has been dropped against a Vermont sheriff accused of kicking a shackled detainee twice in the groin after two mistrials in the case, prosecutors said Monday.
A judge declared a second mistrial on Oct. 7 in the case of Franklin County Sheriff John Grismore, who was accused of kicking the detainee when he was captain with the department. A jury also deadlocked at his first trial in July.
Grand Isle State’s Attorney Doug DiSabito said Monday that he reviews any case after a mistrial and decides “whether another trial is a good use of public resources and is in the interests of justice.
“I did that here and have determined that a third trial is not in the public interest. Therefore, I am dismissing the case against Mr. Grismore,” DiSabito said in a statement.
In December 2023, the Vermont Criminal Justice Council found that Grismore violated the state’s use of force policy and voted 15-1 that he permanently lose his law enforcement certification, which means he is unable to enforce the law in Vermont.
If the council had not taken that action, “the right thing in this matter would likely have been to take this to trial again. That will not be happening. This case is now closed,” DiSabito said.
Grismore thanked his family, friends, lawyers and other supporters.
“I am deeply grateful to have emerged from this challenging period, and firmly believe that God’s guidance and support played a crucial role in this journey,” he said in an emailed statement.
North Carolina
Lt. gov. sues CNN over report about posts on porn site
RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson announced a lawsuit Tuesday against CNN over its recent report alleging he made explicit racial and sexual posts on a pornography website’s message board, calling the reporting reckless and defamatory.
The lawsuit, filed in Wake County Superior Court, comes less than four weeks after a television report that led many fellow GOP elected officials and candidates, including presidential nominee Donald Trump, to distance themselves from Robinson’s gubernatorial campaign. Robinson announced the lawsuit at a news conference in Raleigh.
CNN “chose to publish despite knowing or recklessly disregarding that Lt. Gov. Robinson’s data — including his name, date of birth, passwords, and the email address supposedly associated with the NudeAfrica account — were previously compromised by multiple data breaches,” the lawsuit states.
CNN declined to comment, spokesperson Emily Kuhn said in an email.
The CNN report said Robinson left statements over a decade ago on the message board in which, in part, he referred to himself as a “black NAZI,” said he enjoyed transgender pornography, said that he preferred Hitler to then-President Barack Obama, and slammed the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. as “worse than a maggot.”
