National Roundup

Massachusetts
Feds: Bulger may have bought guns via private sales
BOSTON (AP) — Reports filed by prosecutors in the case against James “Whitey” Bulger show the Boston mobster bought at least 15 handguns and a 12-gauge shotgun during his years as a fugitive.
The Boston Globe reports that firearms tracing reports show Bulger may have purchased the weapons from gun shows in Nevada and Utah. By law, those dealers would not be required to conduct background checks or even ask for a buyer’s identification.
The 83-year-old Bulger is charged in connection with 19 murders. He was captured in Santa Monica, Calif., in 2011 after more than 16 years on the run.
Federal investigators found nearly 30 firearms, including pistols, revolvers, shotguns and rifles, tucked away in Bulger’s apartment.
His trial is scheduled to begin in June.

Illinois
Attorney: Deal aids widow of poisoned winner
CHICAGO (AP) — A lawyer who represents the widow of a Chicago man who was poisoned with cyanide after winning the lottery says most of the businessman’s $2 million estate should go to his client.
The Chicago Sun-Times reported Thursday that attorney Al-Haroon Husain showed an agreement signed by Urooj Khan months before his death that names his wife, Shabana Ansari, as benefactor for his interest in a dry cleaning operation.
The deal was signed May 2, 2012, said Husain, who is representing Ansari in a court case over the estate.
Khan’s brother, Imtiaz Khan, called the agreement “nonsense.”
Urooj Khan, 46, died July 20 as he was about to collect $425,000 in lottery winnings. His death initially was ruled a result of natural causes. But a relative whose identity remains a mystery asked for further tests that revealed in November that he had been poisoned.
His body was exhumed in January for more testing.
Ansari and other relatives have denied any role in his death and expressed a desire to learn the truth.
Khan had moved to the U.S. from his home in Hyderabad, India, in 1989, setting up several dry cleaning businesses and buying into some real estate investments.
Despite having foresworn gambling after making the haj pilgrimage to Mecca in 2010, Khan bought a lottery ticket in June. He said winning the lottery meant everything to him and that he planned to use his winnings to pay off mortgages, expand his business and donate to St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital.
He was just days from receiving his winnings when he died before dawn on July 20.
The night before, Khan ate dinner with his wife, daughter and father-in-law at their house. Sometime that night, Khan awoke feeling ill. He died the next morning at a hospital.
Khan died without a will, opening the door to a court battle. The businessman’s widow and siblings fought for months over his estate, including the lottery check.

Washington
U.S. High Court asked to review  2005 murder 
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — The U.S. Supreme Court will be asked to review a Kansas Supreme Court decision overturning the capital murder convictions of a Topeka man in the killing of two women in 2003, the Shawnee County District Attorney said in a court filing.
Shawnee County District Attorney Chad Taylor filed a motion late Thursday saying he will appeal the ruling overturning the convictions of Phillip D. Cheatham, who was sentenced to death in 2005.
In the three-page filing with the clerk of the Kansas appellate courts, Taylor also asked the state Supreme Court to delay issuing a mandate that would allow Cheatham’s second trial to start in Shawnee County District Court, The Topeka Capital-Journal reported.
The district attorney’s office has until April 25 to file the petition with the U.S. Supreme Court, which accepts only a few cases for appeal.
Cheatham, 40, was convicted in Shawnee County of killing Annette Roberson and Gloria Jones and wounding a third victim, Annetta Thomas, at a Topeka home in December 2003.
The Kansas Supreme Court ruled in January that Cheatham didn’t get a fair trial because his attorney, Dennis Hawver of Ozawkie, spent only 200 hours preparing for the case, which the court called “appallingly low for a death penalty defense and even more stunning when all but 60 of those hours, as Hawver testified, were spent in trial.”
The court also noted that Hawver told the jury that Cheatham had a prior voluntary manslaughter conviction and referred repeatedly to his client as a “professional drug dealer” and “shooter of people.”
Cheatham’s mother told the Capital-Journal she wasn’t surprised Taylor intended to appeal the state court’s ruling but it wouldn’t change the evidence that her son didn’t get a fair trial.
“Clearly,” Perry-Grigsby said, “Mr. Hawver wasn’t prepared to defend a capital murder case, therefore putting Phillip’s case/life in extreme jeopardy.”

Nebraska
State high court rules in favor of deceived father
OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — The Nebraska Supreme Court has reversed a lower court ruling that kept a father, who was intentionally misled about the birth of his child, from stopping the adoption of his baby.
The father, listed only as Jeremiah J. in court documents, appealed after a Hall County court ruled last year that he could not stop adoption proceedings for his biological daughter. The lower court reasoned that Jeremiah failed to object to the adoption within five business days after the girl’s birth, as required by law.
But on Friday, Nebraska’s high court reversed that ruling, noting that the girl’s mother, identified only as Dakota D., testified in court that she purposely misled Jeremiah regarding the date of birth of the child to prevent him from complying with the state’s five-day law.

Oregon
Jail inmate sues  county over his failed suicide try
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — A man who was paralyzed in a suicide attempt at the Multnomah County Jail is suing the county for $12 million.
In the lawsuit filed this week, 29-year-old Westley Wilson says the county and jail staff were negligent for failing to provide a safe environment or put him on a suicide watch.
The Oregonian reports Wilson landed on his head in a jump from a second-floor tier last May after he was jailed in Portland for violating a restraining order. Wilson is now a paraplegic in a nursing home.
The county has installed suicide-prevention bars on the second-floor tier and gives jailers training in suicide-prevention.a