National Roundup

Ohio
Teacher may have duct-taped students’ mouths 
AKRON, Ohio (AP) — A northeast Ohio middle-school teacher has until later this week to respond to an allegation that she posted a Facebook photo of her students with their mouths covered with duct tape.
The Akron Public Schools Board of Education voted last week to pursue the firing of Melissa Cairns. She’s a math teacher at Buchtel Community Learning Center.
The school district says the photo, posted on Cairn’s personal Facebook page, showed some of her students with duct tape across their mouths. The caption read: “Finally found a way to get them to be quiet!!!” The district says a colleague of Cairns’ notified a supervisor of the photo.
The Akron Beacon Journal reports that Cairns was put on paid leave Oct. 19. She hasn’t responded to requests for comment.

Georgia
Man sues after state rejects GAYGUY plate
ATLANTA (AP) — An Atlanta man is suing the Georgia Department of Driver Services, contending that his rights were violated when the state rejected his application for vanity plates making reference to his sexual orientation.
James Cyrus Gilbert maintains in the lawsuit that state officials rejected his application for the tags 4GAYLIB, GAYPWR and GAYGUY.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports that all three vanity plates are on the list of vanity plates banned by the state, although the state has approved plates expressing some political or religious expressions.
Gilbert said he wasn’t asking for a plate that was vulgar or “over the top.”
Representatives of the state Attorney General’s office, Georgia Department of Driver Services and the Department of Revenue, the agency that administers vanity plates, declined to comment on the lawsuit.

Oklahoma
Charges against ex-megachurch employee stand
TULSA, Okla. (AP) — A judge has refused to dismiss charges against a man accused of sending lewd and indecent proposals to a 14-year-old girl he met when he worked as a janitor at a Tulsa megachurch.
Judge William Kellough on Tuesday rejected a defense motion to dismiss charges against former Victory Christian Center employee Israel Castillo.
Castillo has pleaded not guilty. His arraignment is scheduled for Feb. 1.
Defense attorneys say Castillo didn’t know the girl was 14. Prosecutors say he met the girl at a church youth camp and knew her age because he had known her for two years.
Castillo faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted.
Another former church employee was sentenced last month to 55 years in prison for raping a 13-year-old girl at the church.

Texas
Woman gets 85 years in deathy by dehydration
DALLAS (AP) — A Dallas woman was sentenced Tuesday to 85 years in prison in the dehydration death of her 10-year-old stepson whom she denied of water for days during record-high temperatures.
Tina Marie Alberson, 44, was convicted Friday of injury to a child, a second-degree felony, in the July 2011 death of Jonathan James.
Alberson, who had faced up to life in prison because of a previous felony conviction, did not appear to react when her sentenced was read.
The boy’s maternal grandmother, Sue Shotwell, made a statement in court after the sentence was handed down.
“We trusted you with our baby,” she said.
She said she’s forgiven Alberson but many members of the family, including the mother of the child, have not. She said they remember Jonathan as an active little boy who wanted to wake up before dawn so he could ride his bike.
Police had thought Jonathan’s death was heat-related until the medical examiner’s report indicated otherwise.
Alberson, who testified in her own defense, told jurors that she limited Jonathan’s water intake a few times as punishment for misbehaving, and that she saw him drinking water when he wasn’t in “time-out.” She said she saw no sign that he was in medical distress.
The boy’s twin brother, now 12, testified that Jonathan repeatedly asked for water and pretended to use the bathroom so that he could sneak a drink from the faucet before their stepmother ordered him out. Joseph James told jurors he was concerned for his brother’s health but was too afraid of Alberson to do anything.
During the sentencing phase, Shotwell testified that the boys didn’t want to go to Alberson’s house and that Jonathan couldn’t understand why he was always in trouble with his stepmother.
Alberson was previously convicted of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon after hitting someone with her van in 1998.
The boy’s father, Michael Ray James, 43, is set for trial next month.

North Carolina
Woman sues NYPD in Empire State shooting
MINEOLA, N.Y. (AP) — A North Carolina college student hit by police gunfire during a shooting outside the Empire State Building argued in a lawsuit Tuesday that the police department and the officers involved need better training to deal with such confrontations in the future.
Nine bystanders, including 32-year-old Chenin Duclos, were hit by police bullets, ricochets and fragments when two officers fired at a man suspected of gunning down a former co-worker outside the Manhattan landmark.
Duclos said in a lawsuit filed Tuesday in Manhattan’s state Supreme Court that the department and the officers were “grossly negligent” in the way they handled the shooting — firing 16 shots on a crowded street outside one of the world’s largest tourist attractions.
Amy Marion, an attorney representing Duclos in the lawsuit, said the NYPD needs to improve training.
City officials did not immediately comment on Tuesday’s lawsuit. Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly and Mayor Michael Bloomberg said after the shooting that they believe the officers followed proper protocol.
Wearing a business suit and carrying an attache bag, Jeffrey Johnson waited for Steven Eroclino outside the Empire State Building in August and opened fire. He then slipped the gun into his bag and calmly walked up the street, police said. Two construction workers who witnessed the shooting followed him and notified the two officers stationed outside the skyscraper as part of the department’s counterterrorism efforts. Video showed Johnson turning, facing the officers and raising his weapon as they opened fire.
The lawsuit contends police were “grossly negligent in not waiting to confront Johnson until he moved to a location where innocent bystanders were not present.”