National Roundup

Missouri
Jury: St. Louis County police sergeant faced discrimination
CLAYTON, Mo. (AP) — A jury has recommended a St. Louis County police sergeant be awarded nearly $20 million after finding the department discriminated against him because he’s gay.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports the jury’s verdict came Friday in a 2017 lawsuit brought by Sgt. Keith Wildhaber.

Wildhaber testified that he was told to “tone down his gayness” to secure a promotion to lieutenant. Wildhaber was passed over 23 times for promotion. He said he also was transferred from the Affton precinct against his wishes after filing a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

The jury awarded Wildhaber $1.9 million in actual damages and $10 million in punitive damages on the discrimination claim. It added $999,000 in actual damages and $7 million in punitive damages for the retaliation claim.

Idaho
University of Idaho settles lawsuit from sex assault victim
BOISE, Idaho (AP) — The University of Idaho has reached a settlement in a lawsuit brought by a woman who said school officials told her to transfer to another campus if she didn’t want to continue attending classes with a student who sexually assaulted her.

The woman was a graduate student at the UI’s College of Law when she reported that she’d been sexually assaulted by a fellow law student while off campus on Feb. 11, 2016. In her lawsuit, filed in 2017, the woman said that she filed a formal complaint and after an investigation the university concluded that a sexual assault occurred. But she said while the investigation process was moving forward — and even after the university reached its conclusions — she received no real accommodations.

Instead, she said, school officials told her to sit in the back of the classroom if she didn’t want to face her attacker in class, to listen to audio recordings of the lectures at home, or to move to another city to take classes there.

U.S. District Judge David Nye dismissed the case Thursday after attorneys on both sides told the court they’d reached a settlement to end the lawsuit. The terms of the settlement were not included in the court documents.

University of Idaho spokeswoman Jodi Walker declined the comment on the case. The woman’s attorney, Brook Cunningham, did not immediately respond to requests for comment from The Associated Press.

The University of Idaho has faced scrutiny in recent years for mishandling sexual assault complaints. Last year the school’s former athletic director Rob Spear was fired following an investigation into how school officials responded to several sexual assault and harassment claims made in 2013. In 2014, the university was among 55 colleges and universities under investigation by the U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights for possible violations in the way it handled sexual violence and harassment complaints.


Connecticut
Ex-officer pleads out to stalking, assaulting teen
BRIDGEPORT, Conn. (AP) — A former Connecticut police officer has pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting an 18-year-old woman he met through his department’s explorer program.

The Connecticut Post reports that retired Trumbull officer 40-year-old Michael Gonzalez pleaded under the Alford doctrine last week to fourth-degree sexual assault, second-degree unlawful restraint and second-degree stalking.

Under such a plea, the defendant doesn’t admit guilt but acknowledges there is enough evidence for a guilty finding at trial.

Gonzalez faces three years of probation at sentencing on Nov. 7.

Gonzalez was charged with using the Trumbull Police Department’s computer to get the victim’s address and car registration information. Authorities say he went to her home in August 2017 and assaulted her. She had been in the department’s cadet program.

Louisiana
Woman, 78, gets 22 years for attempted murder of lawyer
COVINGTON, La. (AP) — A 78-year-old Louisiana woman has been sentenced to 22 years in prison for trying to kill her attorney.

Patricia Currie of Mandeville was 75 when she raised a loaded shotgun toward Keith Couture in 2016.

A St. Tammany Parish jury convicted Currie in August of attempted second-degree murder, which carries a minimum sentence of 10 years. Prosecutors asked for the 50-year maximum at Thursday’s sentencing by Judge Alan Zaunbrecher, District Attorney Warren Montgomery said in a news release Friday.

Couture testified in August that Currie arrived when he was alone, and he found latex gloves on her hands, plastic grocery bags on her feet and a towel across her lap, The Times-Picayune/The New Orleans Advocate reported.

When he asked why she was there, she said she had come to kill him, showed him the shotgun under the towel and raised it toward him, but he wrestled it away, he said.

St. Tammany Parish deputies “discovered the gun was loaded and that she had four additional shotgun shells in her undergarments, as well as a box of ammunition in her car,” Montgomery’s news release said.

Currie testified that she was just trying to scare Couture. He had tried unsuccessfully a few weeks earlier to withdraw as her attorney in a bankruptcy case, the newspaper reported.

Zaunbrecher said the violent nature of the crime, the shotgun, her lack of truthfulness, candor or remorse were mitigated by the fact that she had no prior convictions, according to the news release.

If she serves the whole term, she’ll be 100 at its end.

California
Man gets prison in Montana meth case
BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — A California man who told a Montana Highway Patrol trooper he had been in Yellowstone National Park to visit Yogi Bear has been sentenced to prison for possessing 8.3 pounds (3.7 kilograms) of methamphetamine officers found in the spare tire of his rental car.

The Billings Gazette reports 32-year-old Manuel Paz Sanchez Jr. of Sacramento was sentenced Thursday to 15 years and eight months in federal prison for possession of meth with intent to distribute.

The trooper stopped Sanchez on Interstate 90 near Columbus in December 2017 for following another car too closely.

Court records say Sanchez seemed confused about where he was going and where he had been, and his rental car was due to have been returned a day earlier. He granted officers permission to search the car.