National Roundup

Minnesota
Hemp farmer sues state over loss of license

LANESBORO, Minn. (AP) — An industrial hemp farmer is suing the state of Minnesota in federal court claiming it violated his constitutional rights by revoking his growing license and telling him to destroy his crop.

Luis Hummel operates 5th Sun Gardens in Lanesboro. The Minnesota Department of Agriculture told Hummel in a letter that a Fillmore County sheriff’s deputy obtained a product that came from Hummel’s farm and that it exceeded the THC limit allowed under state law. THC is the ingredient that produces a high.

Hummel says he was never given any evidence that his product’s THC levels were higher than industrial hemp. He tells Minnesota Public Radio News that state officials are trying to destroy his multimillion-dollar business without due process or clear rules for the budding industry.

Texas
Police respond to burglary, find deer instead

LUFKIN, Texas (AP) — Police who surrounded a house in eastern Texas because they thought they had a burglary in progress found a deer instead.

The homeowner called Lufkin police early Thursday after she heard glass breaking. The woman hid in a closet and realized she had left her weapon in the kitchen. Officers were worried it could end up in the hands of the suspect.

Video posted on Facebook shows officers entering the home, yelling, “Police! Let me see your hands!” Police say as the officers rounded a corner, they came “face to face with one very frightened doe.”

The officers used chairs to shoo the deer out the door.

Maryland
Man sentenced in plot to steal drugs from military hospitals

GREENBELT, Md. (AP) — A Maryland man has been sentenced to more than five years in prison for plotting to steal and resell millions of dollars in prescription drugs from federal military hospitals.

U.S. District Judge Paul Grimm also on Thursday ordered 45-year-old Daniel Mark Wilkerson, of Fort Washington, Maryland, to pay more than $4.4 million in restitution. Wilkerson will be on supervised release for five years after his 66-month prison sentence.

U.S. Attorney Robert Hur’s office says in a news release that Wilkerson conspired with two pharmacy technicians to steal more than $2.1 million worth of human growth hormone from the now-closed Walter Reed Medical Center in Washington. Prosecutors say Wilkerson and one of the technicians also stole more than $850,000 worth of pharmaceuticals from Fort Belvoir Community Hospital in Virginia.

Oregon
New trial ordered for pastor over use of word victim

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — The Oregon Supreme Court has ordered a new trial for a pastor sentenced in 2015 to 20 years in prison in a sex abuse case after finding that witnesses in testimony improperly referred to the accuser as a victim.

The Oregonian/OregonLive reports the court found Thursday the term may have undermined Michael Sperou’s presumption of innocence and affected his right to a fair trial.

During the trial, the witnesses called by Multnomah County prosecutors included the woman Sperou was charged with abusing as a child, six other women who accused him of abuse, detectives and others.

The court says detectives and at least one former church member referred to the women as victims.

Sperou was a co-founder and pastor of the North Clackamas Bible Community in Happy Valley. He denied any abuse occurred and said the accusations were lies that followed a split in the church.

Illinois
Slippery suspect: Police remove snake from patrol car engine

PARK FOREST, Ill. (AP) — How do you handcuff a snake?

Police in Park Forest, a Chicago suburb, spent 30 minutes removing a snake from the engine of a patrol car Wednesday night.

Chief Chris Mannino and another officer stopped their car when they spotted the 3-foot-long (0.9 meter) snake in the road. But the slippery serpent didn’t surrender; it escaped under the car and into the engine area.

Mannino says he finally was able to grab the snake behind its head and safely remove it. After police posted photos on Twitter, readers recognized it as a snake that’s native to northern Illinois.

The snake wasn’t in custody for long. Police released it in a nearby forest.

Iowa
Man admits to plotting ex-wife’s lover’s death

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — A 72-year-old central Iowa man who admitted to plotting the killing of his ex-wife’s lover has walked free.

The Des Moines Register reports that a district judge on Thursday sentenced Vernon Huser to 10 years in prison for voluntary manslaughter and the solicitation of Lance Morningstar’s death in 2004.

Huser was twice convicted of first-degree murder in the killing and twice granted a new trial. This week, he pleaded guilty to the reduced charges. He admitted for the first time that he recruited Louis Woolheater to fatally shoot Morningstar.

Woolheater is serving life in prison.

Huser’s attorney Alfredo Parrish says his client was released after the sentencing because of time served for his earlier convictions in the same crime.

Huser must pay at least $150,000 in restitution.

Connecticut
Judge OKs $60M settlement in sex abuse case

HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — A federal judge in Connecticut has approved a $60 million legal settlement involving as many as 170 people who say they were sexually abused as children at a now-defunct charity school in Haiti.

That’s according to lawyers who filed the class-action lawsuit on behalf of poor and often homeless boys who attended the Project Pierre Toussaint School over a period of more than a decade beginning in the late 1990s.

A founder of the school, Fairfield University graduate Douglas Perlitz, is serving a nearly 20-year prison sentence for sexual abuse.

The defendants included the university and religious organizations which financially supported the Haiti school. The lawsuit alleged they were negligent in supervising Perlitz and failed to prevent the abuse.

Fairfield said in an earlier statement it played no role in running the Haiti school.

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