Court Digest

Nebraska
Ex-prosecutor guilty of stalking estranged wife, boyfriend

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — A former Nebraska county prosecutor has pleaded guilty in federal court to using his office to stalk his estranged wife and her boyfriend.

Former Dodge County Attorney Oliver Glass was convicted of the misdemeanor Monday after he entered his plea. The Omaha World-Herald reports that the 47-year-old will face up to a year in jail when he is sentenced in February.

Prosecutors said Glass improperly accessed a law enforcement database to look up his estranged wife’s boyfriend and asked Fremont police officers and Dodge County deputies he knew to follow the man and his estranged wife for several months in 2020. It wasn’t immediately clear whether any of the officers involved are being investigated for their roles.

The federal indictment against Glass said a few days after he learned about the relationship Glass sent 46 text messages and made 10 phone calls to the boyfriend.

Glass also asked police officers and sheriff’s deputies to monitor his wife’s and her boyfriend’s homes and to try to catch them driving under the influence, the indictment says. Glass is accused of at one point telling a Nebraska State trooper that he was angry enough to “kill them both.”

Glass resigned from office last year after his second drunken driving arrest several months before he was indicted. Previously, Glass had refused to resign after his first DUI conviction in March 2020. He was sentenced to 18 months probation in that case for violating the terms of his probation in the first DUI case.

The boyfriend has filed a lawsuit against Dodge County over the harassment that he says prompted him to be admitted to a psychiatric hospital because he considered killing himself. He told the newspaper that for a time officers would regularly park outside his apartment and he would be followed by police or Glass himself wherever he went.

Glass’ law license has been indefinitely suspended and his four-year-old divorce case remains pending. His attorney, Clarence Mock, said Glass acknowledges that it was wrong to use officers as his own personal detectives and now wants to put the ordeal behind him.

“The collateral consequences for him have been so severe and possibly long-lasting,” Mock said. “It’s going to be difficult for him to recover.”

Mock said Glass says he never meant to harm the couple, but he was worried about the safety of his children because the man has a criminal record.

Glass went through alcohol treatment in 2017 and 2020, and Mock said he is now working for a business that sells ads on golf course benches and sober.

 

Tennessee
Ex-lawmaker pleads guilty to campaign cash scheme

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — A former Tennessee state senator accused of violating federal campaign finance laws pleaded guilty to two charges on Tuesday after initially calling the case against him a political witch hunt.

Former Republican state Sen. Brian Kelsey, who previously pleaded not guilty, changed his plea in front of a federal judge in the case related to his failed 2016 congressional campaign. The move came after his co-defendant, Nashville social club owner Joshua Smith, pleaded guilty last month to one count under a deal that requires him to “cooperate fully and truthfully” with federal authorities.

In October 2021, a federal grand jury in Nashville indicted Kelsey and Smith, who owns The Standard club, on several counts each. The indictment alleged that Kelsey, Smith and others violated campaign finance laws by illegally concealing the transfer of $91,000 — $66,000 from Kelsey’s state Senate campaign committee and $25,000 from a nonprofit that advocated about legal justice issues — to a national political organization to fund advertisements urging support of Kelsey’s 2016 failed congressional campaign.

Prosecutors allege that Kelsey and others caused the national political organization to make illegal and excessive campaign contributions to Kelsey by coordinating with the organization on advertisements, and that they caused the organization to file false reports to the Federal Election Commission.

Kelsey pleaded guilty to conspiracy to defraud the Federal Election Commission as well as aiding and abetting the acceptance of excessive contributions on behalf of a federal campaign. He faces up to five years in prison for each count.

Kelsey ignored reporters’ questions on the way in and out of court Tuesday. He and Smith are scheduled to be sentenced in June, though Kelsey’s attorney indicated that his team and Smith’s would like the sentencing moved up.

Initially, Kelsey met the charges with a defiant tone, saying in an October 2021 online announcement to reporters that he was “totally innocent,” calling the charges “nothing but a political witch hunt” and blaming President Joe Biden’s administration. He repeated that he was “totally innocent” during a state Senate floor speech days later.

Then in March, Kelsey announced on Twitter that he would not seek reelection. Without mentioning his indictment, he tweeted that he had been influenced by “a recent, exciting change to my personal life, and I look forward to spending more time with my family.” In September, his wife gave birth to their twin sons.

Kelsey, a 44-year-old attorney from Germantown, was first elected to the General Assembly in 2004 as a state representative. He was later elected to the state Senate in 2009.

After Kelsey’s guilty plea, Tennessee Republican Senate Speaker Randy McNally said in a statement: “Brian Kelsey has always been a friend and served the Senate well. I appreciate his willingness to take responsibility and accept punishment. I will be keeping he and his family in my prayers as he faces the consequences of his actions.”

Smith pleaded guilty to aiding and abetting the solicitation and spending of at least $25,000 of so-called “soft money” — or funds not subject to federal limitations and reporting requirements — in connection with a federal election.

Within about a week of Smith’s plea, Kelsey’s attorneys asked a judge for a hearing about changing his plea, without specifying how it would change.

The claims in the indictment resemble a complaint against Kelsey’s campaign filed with the Federal Election Commission and the Department of Justice in 2017 by a nonprofit, the Campaign Legal Center.

That complaint claimed that independent expenditures made by the American Conservative Union in the 2016 race were coordinated with Kelsey’s congressional campaign. A spokesperson for the prominent nonprofit conservative organization said at the time of the indictment that it had been “fully cooperating with this investigation since 2018” and that “neither ACU nor any member of the board is a subject or target of this investigation.”

 

Connecticut 
Man is convicted in 1987 double killing
 

NEW HAVEN, Conn. (AP) — Thirty-five years after a man and his adult son were found with their throats slashed in their Connecticut home, a longtime suspect was convicted Tuesday in the killings, prosecutors said.

Willie McFarland was found guilty of murder in the deaths of Fred and Greg Harris, New Haven prosecutors said.

“Today’s jury verdict is the result of a 35-year quest by dedicated investigators and prosecutors who never gave up their search for justice for the victims of these horrendous crimes,” State’s Attorney John Doyle Jr. said in a release.

Messages were sent to McFarland’s lawyers. The 55-year-old faces sentencing Jan. 31.

Fred Harris, 59, and Greg Harris, 23, were found, dead and bound, in their Hamden home on Aug. 27, 1987.

McFarland quickly became a suspect and was questioned soon after the killings. But for years, authorities had no physical evidence to link him to the crime, though they continued to look, conducting DNA testing around 2006.

Then, in 2018, a new round of DNA testing on a glove found at the scene found that it was “at least 1.5 million times more likely” than not that McFarland was one of four contributors, authorities said at the time.

He was arrested in 2019.

 

Washington
Court: Long ­sentence for Black man who killed at 17 stands

SEATTLE (AP) — The Washington Supreme Court has declined to reconsider an opinion that upheld a Black man’s virtual life sentence for shootings he committed at age 17, despite criticism that the ruling betrayed racial bias.

The court upheld the 61-year sentence for Tonelli Anderson in September, abandoning a precedent issued just a year earlier in which it said — in the case of a white defendant — that such long terms for juvenile killers were unconstitutional because it left them no chance of a meaningful life outside prison.

Anderson’s attorney, Travis Stearns of the Washington Appellate Project, sought reconsideration of the 5-4 ruling, writing that it reflected racial bias. Three civil rights organizations — the Fred T. Korematsu Center for Law and Equality at Seattle University School of Law; the Juvenile Law Center, based in Philadelphia; and Huy, which supports Indigenous inmates in the Pacific Northwest — also urged the court to reconsider.

But such motions are legal long shots, and the court denied it lst Monday without explanation. The King County prosecutors had also opposed it, saying Anderson’s criminal history and belated acceptance of responsibility helped distinguish his case.

Anderson, now 45, shot two women, killing one and blinding the other, during a drug robbery in Tukwila in 1994. An accomplice also shot and killed a man at the same home.

Anderson was not immediately arrested and went on to commit other crimes as a young adult, including assault and robbery, and he wrote letters to girlfriends bragging about the shootings. It wasn’t until 1998, after investigators learned of the letters, that he was charged.

He was convicted of first-degree murder in 2000 and sentenced to 61 years. He was granted a new sentencing hearing in 2018, following federal and state rulings that children must be treated differently by the justice system. But the judge gave him the same term, finding Anderson had not shown the shootings reflected “transient immaturity.”

In recent years, the Washington Supreme Court has further restricted sentences that can be imposed on children.

In 2018, the justices held that it violated the state Constitution to sentence 16- or 17-year-olds to life in prison without parole. That ruling came in the case of Brian Bassett, a white man who killed his parents and brother when he was 16. Bassett has since been resentenced to 28 years.

In September, the court struck down a 46-year sentence for Timothy Haag, a white man who was 17 when he drowned his 7-year-old neighbor. In that case, a six-justice majority held that juvenile murder defendants must be given “a meaningful opportunity to rejoin society after leaving prison.”

Bassett and Haag were both quickly caught and prosecuted.

In Anderson’s appeal, Justice Debra Stephens wrote for the 5-4 majority that such virtual life sentences for juveniles are barred by the state Constitution only if their crimes “reflect youthful immaturity, impetuosity, or failure to appreciate risks and consequences.”

Anderson’s was not such a case, Stephens said.

The dissenting justices said it was nonsensical that the court would find a 46-year sentence for a white 17-year-old to be an unconstitutional “de facto” life sentence, while upholding a 61-year sentence for a Black 17-year-old. Justice Mary Yu wrote it would be “willfully oblivious” to conclude race played no role.

The King County Prosecutor’s Office said the high court’s decision maintained the discretion of trial judges to weigh the facts of each case and apply an appropriate sentence.