Georgia: Convict missed deadline, banned from appeal
ATLANTA (AP) — A Georgia convict sentenced to 10 years on robbery and assault charges will not be allowed to challenge his conviction because he failed to mail in his legal documents on time.
The Georgia Supreme Court released a 4-3 decision Monday that found Brandon Cooper could not move forward with his appeal because it was filed one day late.
Cooper argued that the letter was properly addressed and that it was delivered to the prison mailroom on June 27 — several days before the July 1 deadline. A trial court concluded that it was filed on time and allowed the motion to go forward.
But the Georgia Supreme Court’s majority disagreed and reversed the ruling, finding that Cooper had missed the deadline.
Georgia: Court reinstates convictions for ‘Pantyhose Rapist’
ATLANTA (AP) — Georgia’s top court has reinstated rape convictions of a man accused of making women don pantyhose with a hole and then raping them.
The court’s unanimous ruling Monday reverses a decision by the Georgia Court of Appeals that had thrown out the convictions against Ali Nejad, who authorities dubbed the “Pantyhose Rapist.”
Nejad was convicted in 2005 or raping two women in separate assaults and he was suspected in several others. But an appeals court reversed his conviction and 35-year prison sentence in 2009 on grounds that he had received “ineffective assistance of counsel.”
The Georgia Supreme Court’s ruling found that the trial court followed proper procedure and that the appeals court erred in making its ruling.
Florida: Nun arraigned on new charge in girl’s kidnapping
TAVARES, Fla. (AP) — The attorney for a nun accused of taking a 2-year-old girl and fleeing the country has entered a not guilty plea in a central Florida courtroom for a witness tampering charge.
Laura Caballero did not appear in court Monday. She’s accused of attempting to “alter” the testimony of a woman who notarized a power-of-attorney that Caballero used to take the girl to Argentina.
She already pleaded not guilty to interfering with custody and false imprisonment.
Authorities say Caballero bullied a family in the U.S. illegally, taking their daughter to Argentina for six months.
Caballero was known as Sister Mary at the St. Filumena Catholic Church in Eustis. The church is not a Roman Catholic church affiliated with the Orlando Diocese or the Vatican, nor are its clergy and nuns.
Arkansas: Judge schedules hearing for death row inmate
TEXARKANA, Ark. (AP) — A federal judge has scheduled a hearing for a death row inmate whose lawyers say refuses to meet with them.
Attorneys for Joe Louis Dansby want the court to find that mental illness prevents the determination of whether Dansby is ineligible for the death penalty because of mental defect.
U.S. District Judge Harry Barnes has scheduled an informational hearing for next week for Dansby at the Varner Supermax Prison. The order says if Dansby doesn’t want to leave his cell then the court will conduct the hearing “cell-side.”
Dansby was convicted and sentenced to death for the 1992 shooting deaths of 21-year-old Malissa Clark and 23-year-old Jeff Lewis in Nevada County.
Indiana: Former pain doctor must forfeit $500,000
HAMMOND, Ind. (AP) — A federal judge has ruled that a former pain doctor from northwestern Indiana must forfeit more than $500,000 that prosecutors say was linked to a medical crime conviction.
The judge ruled that the federal government could take cash and bank accounts of Jong Bek, who spent 41 months in prison after being convicted in 2005 of illegally prescribing painkillers at his Gary clinic.
This new forfeiture is separate from the more than $535,000 Bek was ordered to hand over at the time of his conviction.
Bek called his treatment “extreme punishment” and said the ruling leaves him with no money.
Murder charges against Bek in the deaths of two patients were dropped in 2003 after a toxicologist could not link the deaths to medications prescribed by him.?
