Court Digest

California
Killer charged in 1988 slaying of 9-year-old girl

Michaela Joy Garecht was last seen on Nov. 19, 1988, wearing jeans rolled over her knees and feather-shaped earrings.

More than 32 years later, the 9-year-old girl with blond hair and blue eyes is still missing.

California authorities announced Monday that they have charged convicted killer David Misch with Michaela’s kidnapping and slaying, a cold case that stunned the San Francisco Bay Area. Police said they only recently were able to match a partial palm print at the scene to Misch.

But Michaela’s body has never been found. She would have been 42 next month.

“In the last year, I had to come to a place accepting that Michaela was probably no longer alive,” her mother, Sharon Murch, wrote in a statement. “But somehow, that acceptance was far more wrapped up in the idea of Michaela sitting on a fluffy pink cloud walking streets of gold, dancing on grassy hills, soaring among the stars. What I did not envision was my daughter as a dead child.

“It was only when I heard this news that this vision of reality appeared, and I honestly have not figured out what to do with it,” Murch said.

On Nov. 19, 1988, Michaela and her best friend rode their scooters to a market in Hayward to buy a snack days before Thanksgiving. It was their first trip there without teenage neighbors.

They left their scooters outside, and officials allege that Misch moved a scooter to isolate one of the girls. When Michaela went to retrieve it, he forced her into his car and drove away. The palm print that led to Misch’s charges was found on the scooter. It was too small to be scanned through a computer database and had to be analyzed manually.

Misch, now 59, has been charged with murder and kidnapping and is scheduled to be arraigned Tuesday. It was not immediately clear if he had an attorney who could speak on his behalf.

Misch was already in a prison for the 1989 murder of a woman in the Hayward area. He is also a suspect in a 1986 case where two women were killed in Fremont, another city in the Bay Area.

Fremont police reached out to Hayward detectives about Misch, thinking there might be a link between their cases even though some of the circumstances were different. Authorities would not say what led police to believe the cases were connected.

Hayward detectives are treating Michaela’s disappearance as a murder even though her body was never found.

Rows of filing cabinets, each drawer marked with a photograph of the young girl, have filled the police station for more than 32 years.

The charges have brought little solace to Michaela’s mother.

“I feel as though I am still looking for Michaela, but now I don’t know where,” she wrote. “I honestly feel lost in the dark.”

Ohio
State Supreme Court: Sentence in child’s death isn’t too long

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — The Ohio Supreme Court has reinstated the 10-year prison sentence given to an Ohio couple convicted of failing to obtain medical care for their special-needs daughter who died.

In a 6-1 ruling issued Monday, the justices found the 8th District Court of Appeals overstepped its authority in 2018 when it determined the sentence given to Randy and Carissa Jones was too harsh.
They were convicted in 2015 of involuntary manslaughter and child endangering in 12-year-old Tia Jones’ death and have remained jailed since the sentence was imposed.

Doctors said Tia died in 2013 after an abscess on her ankle became gangrenous, causing a staph infection that led to pneumonia. She weighed 64 pounds (29 kilograms) when she died.

The 8th District Court of Appeals said the couple did what they thought best in caring for her. But the majority of the state Supreme Court ruled that appeals courts can only vacate sentences where they run afoul of state law, and the Joneses’ sentence was within the confines of the law.

The lone dissenting Supreme Court judge found the majority’s ruling essentially prohibits appeals courts from providing any meaningful review of sentences doled out at the state’s trial court level.


Ohio
Divided court dismisses challenge to state bump stock ban

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — A divided Ohio Supreme Court has dismissed a challenge to a now-repealed ordinance in Ohio’s capital city banning bump stocks, which allow semi-automatic weapons to fire rapidly.

The Columbus Dispatch reports that the state’s highest court ruled 4-3 Friday that two Ohio gun-rights groups, Ohioans for Concealed Carry and Buckeye Firearms Foundation, had no standing to sue the city of Columbus.

The court majority decided that the groups had suffered no harm in a case that the justices heard despite the fact that the Columbus City Council had repealed its ordinance a year ago. Officials said that made the case moot but the court disagreed, saying the council could pass the ordinance again in the future.

The court said, however, among other things, that the groups weren’t “taxpayers in their own right” and therefore had not established standing “to bring a taxpayer action.”

The two groups last year had removed their names from the suit after an appeals court loss that also cited their lack of standing. The city also challenged the standing of the sole remaining plaintiff, a member of Ohioans for Concealed Carry, saying he had not been charged with a misdemeanor offense under the ordinance.

A Franklin County judge in 2018 found the ban to be unconstitutional, but an appeals court reversed that. In March, the U.S. Supreme Court rebuffed a bid to overturn a federal ban on bump stocks that followed the 2017 Las Vegas mass shooting. Columbus said the federal action made the city ordinance unnecessary.

The paper said a representative of Ohioans for Concealed Carry couldn’t be reached and a message seeking comment was left for Buckeye Firearms.

New York
NYC education leader sentenced for child sex crime

GREEN BAY, Wis. (AP) — A high-ranking New York City education official and former Wisconsin principal accused of swapping explicit sexual images with a 15-year-old boy has been sentenced to five years in prison.

David Hay, 40, pleaded guilty in September to child enticement and possession of child pornography. Court documents show that Hay exchanged emails with the boy. During the course of these communications, the defendant received sexually explicit digital images and videos from the child. Hay also provided sexually explicit images of himself to the 15-year-old.

U.S. District Judge William C. Griesbach on Friday ordered Hay, of Brooklyn, New York, to register as a sex offender and serve 10 years of supervised release at the end of his prison term.

Hay served as principal at Tomah High School from 2011 to 2014. Prior to that he was an administrator at Kettle Moraine High School in southeastern Wisconsin. Most recently, Hay served as deputy chief of staff to the New York City Chancellor of Schools.

Florida
Former health department employee sues state over search warrant

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — A former Florida Department of Health employee sued the state on Monday over a search warrant executed on her house after investigators said they identified a message sent from a computer at the address to health department employees.

Rebekah Jones, who was fired in May for insubordination after repeatedly violating department policy about communicating with the media, helped create the state’s coronavirus dashboard. She contends that she was fired for not falsifying data.

The Florida Department of Law Enforcement served the search warrant earlier this month. Jones posted a 31-second video of officers entering her home, and the department later released more than 20 minutes of bodycam video that shows she refused to respond to phone calls and knocks on her door.

The message that led to the search warrant implored employees still at the Health Department “to speak up before another 17,000 people are dead. You know this is wrong. You don’t have to be a part of this. Be a hero.”

Jones has had several run-ins with law enforcement over personal issues, but has gained international attention by disputing Florida’s COVID-19 statistics. She was paid almost $48,000 a year as a Department of Health employee, but since May has raised nearly $260,000 on a GoFundMe account after criticizing Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis.

“Plaintiff’s firing captured a great deal of media attention nationally and in Florida, much of it negative toward Governor Ron DeSantis,” the lawsuit says. “Governor DeSantis openly denounced Plaintiff in the most vitriolic and vituperative manner in the furor following her firing.”

It says the search of her home was a “sham.”

The commissioner of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, Rick Swearingen, said he was “proud of the professional” shown by his agents as they executed a legal search warrant at the home.

“Our criminal investigation continues, and while I have not seen this lawsuit, I believe the facts will come out in court,” the commissioner added in an email sent to reporters.

Rhode Island
Acrobats hurt in circus accident reach $52.5M settlement

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — Eight acrobats severely injured when the rigging suspending them by their hair plummeted to the floor during a circus performance in Rhode Island in 2014 have reached a $52.5 million settlement with the ownership and management of the arena where the circus was held, their lawyer confirmed Monday.

“It’s a great result, it’s the right result and it’s a just result,” Zachary Mandell, an attorney for the eight women, said of the settlement, first reported by The Providence Journal.

A metal clip that held the acrobats 20 feet (6 meters) above the floor of the Dunkin’ Donuts Center snapped during the May 2014 performance, causing the women to suffer broken bones and spinal injuries. A ninth worker on the ground was also hurt.

Some of the women still suffer from “life-altering” injuries, according to Mandell, who said he could not get into specifics because of medical privacy laws.

“These clients will now be able to have meaningful recoveries with the assistance of this settlement,” he said.

The women in 2016 sued the Rhode Island Convention Center Authority, which owns the arena, and SMG, which manages it. Sean Brousseau, listed as an attorney for both entities, said Monday he could neither confirm nor deny a settlement.

The settlement will be paid by insurers, Mandell said.

According to the lawsuit, SMG agreed to manage all events and maintain safety inside the center, and arranged with Florida-based Feld Entertainment Inc., the parent company of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, to bring the circus to Providence.

After the accident, which occurred in front of thousands of spectators, the U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration concluded circus staff had overloaded a carabiner clip. The clip held up a chandelier-like apparatus from which the women were suspended by their hair.

OSHA cited Feld for a “serious” infraction of industry practice and imposed the maximum possible fine, $7,000.

Feld Entertainment disputed the finding.

Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, which closed in 2017, also agreed to take several steps to improve safety.

An email seeking comment was left with Feld.


Florida
Man pleads guilty to killing wife, leads police to her remains
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — A Florida man has been convicted of killing his estranged wife, who went missing earlier this year.
David Anthony, 44, pleaded guilty Monday to second-degree murder and kidnapping, the Palm Beach Post reported. His plea agreement calls for 38 years in prison at his sentencing early next year.
As part of the deal with prosecutors, Anthony had to tell authorities where he dumped his wife’s remains after killing her in March. Later Monday, investigators found the remains of what they believe are Gretchen Anthony about 3 miles from her Jupiter home, Jupiter Police Chief Daniel Kerr said during a news conference.
Security-camera footage from Gretchen Anthony’s home, neighbors’ testimonies and other evidence connected David Anthony to his wife’s death and disappearance, officials said.
Shortly after Gretchen Anthony disappeared, David Anthony left the state, officials said. He was arrested in New Mexico about a week later.
Gretchen and David Anthony married in March 2015 in Nevada. Court documents showed the filed for divorce at the beginning of 2020.