Category Archives: US justice system

Ex-officer who left woman in car to be hit by train in Colorado given probation

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Jordan Steinke to serve 30 months’ probation for 2022 incident in which she handcuffed and placed woman in car parked on train tracks

A former Colorado police officer who put a handcuffed woman in a parked police vehicle that was hit by a freight train, inflicting serious injuries to the woman, has avoided a jail sentence and must serve 30 months on supervised probation.

Jordan Steinke, 29, was sentenced on Friday by Weld county district court judge Timothy Kerns, who found her guilty of reckless endangerment and assault for the 16 September 2022 crash near Platteville. Kerns acquitted the former Fort Lupton police officer of criminal attempt to commit manslaughter after her bench trial in July.

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Family of boy, 13, who died after bullying attack get $27m from school district

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Diego Stolz died after being beaten by two middle school classmates at campus in southern California in 2019

The family of a 13-year-old boy who died after being beaten by two middle school classmates at their campus in southern California has secured a $27m settlement in what the plaintiffs’ attorneys are calling the largest bullying-related settlement in the history of US litigation.

Felipe and Juana Salcedo received the settlement from the Moreno Valley unified school district over the September 2019 death of Diego Stolz.

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Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis sorry for ‘pain’ caused by letters on behalf of Danny Masterson

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Actors say letters were not meant to undermine victims of Masterson, who was sentenced to 30 years to life in prison for rape

Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis apologized on Saturday for character letters the celebrity couple wrote on behalf of fellow That ’70s Show actor Danny Masterson before he was sentenced for rape this week.

A judge in Los Angeles on Thursday sentenced Masterson to 30 years to life in prison for raping two women in 2003.

Information and support for anyone affected by rape or sexual abuse issues is available from the following organisations. In the US, Rainn offers support on 800-656-4673. In the UK, Rape Crisis offers support on 0808 500 2222. In Australia, support is available at 1800Respect (1800 737 732). Other international helplines can be found at ibiblio.org/rcip/internl.html

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‘Astonishingly cruel’: Alabama seeks to test execution method on death row ‘guinea pig’

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Nine months after Kenneth Smith’s botched lethal injection, state attorney general has asked for approval to kill him with nitrogen

Kenneth Smith is one of two living Americans who can describe what it is like to survive an execution, having endured an aborted lethal injection last November during which he was subjected to excruciating pain tantamount, his lawyers claim, to torture.

Nine months later Smith has been singled out for another undesirable distinction. If the state of Alabama has its way, he will become the test dummy for an execution method that has never before been used in judicial killings and which veterinarians consider unacceptable as a form of euthanasia for animals – death by nitrogen gas.

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Trump legal team claims trial dates ‘by design’ clash with election campaign

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Alina Habba said trials’ schedules would cause them to overlap and clash with voting, preventing the ex-president from campaigning

Donald Trump’s legal spokesperson has predicted that forthcoming early trial dates in the former president’s four criminal cases will not hold, and that his multiple cases could clash with the final stages of the 2024 presidential election campaign and voting.

Alina Habba told the Fox News Sunday show that prosecutors’ plans for fast turnarounds in Trump’s two federal criminal cases and the state indictments in New York and Georgia amounted to “unrealistic theatrics”. She said that each of the trials would last from four to six weeks, raising the threat of overlapping schedules.

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Louisiana court upholds ‘lookback window’ in win for Catholic abuse victims

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Law allows victims of abuse by clerics to file lawsuits for damages regardless of whether deadline had otherwise lapsed

A Louisiana state appeals court has upheld the constitutionality of a law temporarily suspending filing deadlines for people seeking damages over long-ago sexual abuse claims, handing a victory to survivors and a setback to the Roman Catholic diocese opposing them in the case.

The ruling, from a panel of judges with Louisiana’s third circuit court of appeal in Lake Charles, is the first to uphold a 2021 law in the state which opened a three-year window for victims of childhood sexual abuse to file lawsuits for damages regardless of whether the deadline to do so had otherwise lapsed.

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Tyrese Gibson sues Home Depot for $1m over alleged racial discrimination

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Fast & Furious actor claims staffers at hardware store discriminated against him and two of his workers

The US actor and singer Tyrese Gibson is demanding more than $1m from Home Depot after he says staffers at one of the American hardware giant’s stores racially discriminated against him and two of his workers.

Gibson’s lawsuit, which was filed on Wednesday, recounts how he and two men who regularly provide construction services for the Fast & Furious actor went to a Home Depot in West Hills, California, on 11 February to buy some materials for a building project at the entertainer’s home.

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Trump requests to review classified documents at Mar-a-Lago ahead of trial

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Trump’s lawyers asked for a secure facility to be reinstalled at the same Mar-a-Lago club where he hoarded classified documents

Lawyers for Donald Trump asked a federal judge on Wednesday to approve the re-establishment of an ultra-secure facility at his Mar-a-Lago club to review classified documents produced to him in discovery, an audacious request without precedent in national security cases.

The request essentially would give Trump the freedom to discuss and review the same classified documents he has been charged with illegally retaining in the same location where the alleged crimes took place.

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Former Taliban prisoner Bowe Bergdahl’s desertion conviction vacated

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A federal judge ruled that the military judge in former US soldier’s trial failed to disclose a potential conflict of interest

A US judge has vacated the military conviction of Bowe Bergdahl, a former army soldier who pleaded guilty to desertion after he left his post and was captured in Afghanistan and tortured by the Taliban.

The ruling from federal district judge Reggie Walton in Washington says that military judge Jeffrey Nance, who presided over the court-martial, failed to disclose that he had applied to the executive branch for a job as an immigration judge, creating a potential conflict of interest.

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Key judge orders leak inquiry over New Orleans archdiocese cover-up report

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Inquiry ordered following Guardian investigation into retired priest who confessed decades ago to child molestation

A high-ranking federal official has ordered an investigation after the Guardian exposed how New Orleans’s Roman Catholic archdiocese went to extreme lengths to conceal a retired priest who confessed decades ago to child molestation, is still living and has never been prosecuted.

Yet the investigation recently ordered by federal judge Jane Triche Milazzo is not designed to aid efforts to criminally charge the cleric or hold the church administrators who hid his past accountable. Instead, the inquiry is aimed at determining whether anyone violated broad confidentiality rules governing the New Orleans archdiocese’s pending bankruptcy protection filing and related litigation before the Guardian’s report on 91-year-old Lawrence Hecker was published on 20 June.

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Catholic chaplain who sexually abused Louisiana students jailed for five years

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Patrick Wattigny, former high school chaplain who resigned in 2020, pleads guilty to molesting two minors at school

The former chaplain of a Roman Catholic high school in Louisiana has pleaded guilty to molesting two minors whom he met through his work and was ordered to spend five years in prison.

Patrick Wattigny’s plea and sentence on Wednesday came after both of his victims strongly advocated for a harsher punishment. One victim, who was present, described how Wattigny spent time grooming him in the mid-1990s. The victim said Wattigny told him he could help him gain entry to heaven, then took him to a rectory to fondle his genitals. Wattigny also used his fingers to rape the victim while masturbating.

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California governor says he won’t contest parole ruling of Manson follower Leslie Van Houten

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The Charles Manson follower could be free in about two weeks, after spending more than 50 years in prison for two murders

Charles Manson follower Leslie Van Houten could be freed in about two weeks after California governor Gavin Newsom announced he will not ask the state supreme court to reverse her parole. The move paves the way for Van Houten’s release after spending more than 50 years in a southern California prison for two murders in 1969.

The governor’s office said an appeal against a parole ruling by a California appeals court was unlikely – the court only accepts reviews in about 3% of cases petitioned – to succeed and that Newsom was disappointed. The governor had previously rejected parole for Van Houten but on 30 May an appellate court overturned that decision.

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US ‘mom influencer’ guilty of falsely accusing Latino couple of trying to kidnap her children

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Kathleen Sorensen, of California, sentenced to three months in prison for knowingly making false report of crime

A white California woman who styled herself on social media as a “mom influencer” has been ordered to spend three months in prison for falsely accusing a Latino couple of attempting to kidnap her children.

State jurors in Sonoma county found 30-year-old Kathleen “Katie” Sorensen guilty in April of knowingly making a false report of a crime in a case that involved her publishing a December 2020 social media post that asserted a man and a woman had tried to steal her two children from her in the parking lot of a Michaels craft store about 40 miles outside San Francisco.

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Arizona man freed after nearly three decades on death row

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Barry Jones pleads guilty to lesser charge in deal to overturn his conviction for murder of four-year-old girl in 1994

An Arizona man who spent nearly three decades on death row before the reversal of his conviction over the death of a four-year-old girl has been freed from prison.

Barry Jones’s release, ordered on Thursday, came after a Tuscon-area state court judge approved a deal between prosecutors and him which involved his pleading guilty to a lesser murder charge. According to prosecutors, a medical review of the case failed to conclude that Jones caused the girl’s fatal injury, and his pleading guilty to second-degree murder involves his failure to adequately seek emergency care for the victim.

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Missouri man executed for killing two jailers in failed escape plot

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Michael Tisius, 42, received a lethal injection for killing Leon Egley and Jason Acton at the small Randolph county jail in 2000

A man who shot and killed two rural Missouri jailers nearly 23 years ago during a failed attempt to help an inmate escape was executed on Tuesday evening.

Michael Tisius, 42, received a lethal injection of pentobarbital at the state prison in Bonne Terre and was pronounced dead at 6.10 pm . He was convicted of the 22 June 2000 killing of Leon Egley and Jason Acton at the small Randolph county jail.

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Trump hush money trial set for March 2024 during Republican primaries

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Video hearing follows news that E Jean Carroll seeks new damages over ex-president’s comments in CNN town hall

Donald Trump’s trial in New York on criminal charges over hush money payments to the porn star Stormy Daniels will begin on 25 March 2024, amid the Republican presidential primary and less than than eight months before the general election the former president hopes to contest.

The trial date was announced in a hearing in a Manhattan courtroom on Tuesday, Trump attending by video link from his Florida home.

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Parents of US man killed by police during mental health crisis to get $19m

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Killing of Christian Glass, 22, in Colorado last year prompted calls to reform how authorities respond to people in crisis

The parents of a 22-year-old Colorado man in a mental health crisis killed by police are to receive $19m from government state and local agencies while prompting changes to how officers are trained under a settlement announced on Tuesday.

The shooting of Christian Glass by the Clear Creek county sheriff’s office after Glass’s SUV became stuck in the mountain town of Silver Plume last year drew national attention and prompted calls to reform how authorities respond to people with mental health problems.

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Minneapolis to pay $700,000 to family of man killed by police

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Chiasher Vue’s kids wanted to calm their mentally ill father, but police detained them in vehicle and killed him as he pointed a gun

The city of Minneapolis has agreed to a $700,000 settlement with family members who were locked inside two squad cars when police killed their father after officers refused their offers to try and help calm him down.

A federal judge ruled that officers were justified in shooting 52-year-old Chiasher Vue after he pointed a rifle at them on 15 December 2019. The settlement will resolve a lawsuit his family filed arguing that police had illegally and unconstitutionally detained them that night.

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Oklahoma plans new sex offender laws after rapist killed six people before trial

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Scott Fetgatter proposes legislation aimed at halting early release of certain sex offenders after mass killing

An Oklahoma state lawmaker is planning to introduce new legislation aimed at halting the early release of certain sex offenders after a convicted rapist killed six people – including five children – at his home the night before he faced another criminal trial.

The proposal from state representative Scott Fetgatter would come after the killings in his district by 39-year-old Jesse McFadden, who authorities say murdered his wife, her three children and two of their friends before he died by suicide and their bodies were discovered on Monday.

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Elizabeth Holmes to begin 11-year prison sentence at end of month

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Federal judge denies Theranos founder’s request to remain free while she appeals her conviction of fraud and conspiracy

Elizabeth Holmes must begin her more than 11-year prison sentence on 27 April after a federal judge denied the disgraced Theranos founder’s request to remain free while she appeals her conviction.

Holmes, who was convicted on four counts of fraud and conspiracy related to the failed blood-testing startup in January 2022, is “not likely to flee or pose a danger” to the public, US district court judge Edward Davila wrote in his ruling. However, the San Jose-based judge found that her appeal was unlikely to result in a reversal of the verdict or a new trial – a requirement for a defendant to remain free post-conviction.

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