National Roundup

Florida
Police: Pair killed landlord, lived with body 2 weeks
CLEARWATER, Fla. (AP) — Police say a man and a woman are accused of killing their landlord in Florida and living with the body for two weeks while trying to decide how to dispose of it.

Clearwater police said in a news release that 42-year-old Lawrence Edward Cannon faces a first-degree murder charge after 69-year-old Mary Ring was fatally shot after the Super Bowl on Feb. 5.

Officers went to the home on Monday to conduct a welfare check on Ring.

Authorities have charged 44-year-old Jennifer Elam with accessory after the fact to first-degree murder. Cannon and Elam were booked into jail Monday afternoon.

It wasn’t clear how long the two had lived in Ring’s house.

Alaska
University agrees to resolve sex harassment, assault issues
JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) — The University of Alaska system has agreed to resolve issues stemming from a federal review of its handling of campus sexual assault and sexual harassment cases.

The agreement, signed by system President Jim Johnsen on Friday and released Monday, outlines steps the system will need to take over the next several years. It follows a review, initiated in 2014, by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights.

Johnsen, in a letter to the university community, said the system did not enter into the agreement grudgingly and is dedicated to improving the climate and safety on campuses.

The review included 274 sexual harassment and sexual assault files from 2011 to mid-2015, Johnsen said in his letter. He characterized the issues cited in the agreement as ranging from “very serious failures to minor documentation issues.”

The agreement calls for the system to reassess 23 cases to see if there were failings in the university response that should now be addressed and to revise policies and grievance procedures for complaints concerning sex discrimination, among other things. Johnsen told reporters the system has already begun undertaking some of the steps, acting to fix problems identified in a separate review of its own.

“We’ve done a lot, but it’s not enough,” he said during a teleconference call. The system is still working to improve how it responds to, investigates and resolves campus sexual assault and sexual harassment cases, he said.

The Office of Civil Rights is expected to release soon its formal findings, which Johnsen said will contain more detail about specific cases.


Texas
Neurosurgeon gets life in jail for maiming patients
DALLAS (AP) — Jurors sentenced a former Dallas neurosurgeon to life in prison on Monday for maiming patients who had turned to him for surgery to resolve debilitating injuries.

The decision came almost a week after the Dallas County jury convicted 44-year-old Christopher Duntsch of first-degree felony injury to an elderly person.

Prosecutors alleged numerous cases of malpractice against the former Plano physician, including that he improperly placed screws and plates along patients’ spines, left a sponge in another patient and cut a major vein in another. Two of his patients died.

The sentence “won’t obviously bring my mom back and it won’t heal the 34 people that have been affected,” said Caitlin Martin-Linduff, whose mother Kellie Martin died in 2012 following back surgery. “But it will bring some sense of justice and particularly some sense of closure.”

Records showed that Duntsch also operated on the wrong part of a patient’s spine and left one woman wheelchair-dependent. A surgeon testifying for prosecutors said it was like letting an amateur loose in surgery.

Duntsch’s attorneys argued he wasn’t a criminal, just a lousy surgeon.

Prosecutors had accused Duntsch of maiming four patients and causing the death of at least two between July 2012 and June 2013. But the trial centered on Mary Efurd, who was 74 when she underwent surgery in 2012. Evidence showed that she lost a third of her blood volume and the use of a leg following her operation.

“I trusted him. I trusted that he would do what was right,” Efurd testified during the trial.


Wisconsin
Judge allows girl’s statements in Slender Man case
WAUKESHA, Wis. (AP) — A judge has ruled a second Wisconsin girl’s statements to police will be admissible at her trial on charges she tried to kill a classmate to please a fictional horror character called Slender Man.

Judge Michael Bohren on Monday also rejected a defense request to move the trial of 15-year-old Anissa Weier out of Waukesha County. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports Weier’s trial is set for Sept. 11.

Last week, the judge made similar rulings against 14-year-old Morgan Geyser. Geyser’s trial is set for October.

Weier and Geyser have pleaded not guilty by reason of mental disease to attempted homicide charges in adult court. Both girls were 12 when prosecutors say they stabbed classmate Payton Leutner 19 times in a Waukesha park in 2014.
Payton survived.

New York
Police: NY man with chain saw cuts through door, hurts boss
LYONS FALLS, N.Y. (AP) — State police say a 29-year-old man used a chain saw to cut through a door at his boss’s upstate New York home, causing severe injuries to the employer’s hand.

Troopers say Kyle Poore, of Lyons Falls, used a running chain saw late Sunday night to cut through a bedroom door at his employer’s Lewis County home, located 55 miles northeast of Syracuse.

Police say Poore caused severe cuts and tendon damage to his boss’s hand, then fled the scene on foot before troopers arrived.

A state police K-9 tracked Poore through fields and a wooded area before he was caught.

Police haven’t said what led to the incident.

Mississippi
No death penalty sought in double slaying
GULFPORT, Miss. (AP) — Prosecutors have decided against seeking the death penalty against two men charged with killing another man on the Mississippi coast in 2014.

The decision means 20-year-old Rashad Johnson and 22-year-old Jalen Williams will face a maximum penalty of life without parole if convicted of capital murder in the slaying of 41-year-old Lamont Hayes of Gulfport.

The SunHerald reports the men were teenagers when they were charged with fatally shooting Hayes during a burglary and attempted robbery almost three years ago.

Johnson and Williams were supposed to go on trial this week in Harrison County, but a judge delayed the case. The trial is now set for March 20. Both men have pleaded not guilty.