Washington
Man who sexually exploited teens gets 20 years
RIDGEFIELD, Wash. (AP) — A southwest Washington man who pleaded guilty in a scheme in which he enticed and pressured teens into sending him sexually explicit photos and videos has been sentenced to 20 years in federal prison.
Joshua Punt, of Ridgefield, pleaded guilty in April in U.S. District Court in Tacoma to production of child pornography, enticement of a minor, distribution of child pornography and advertisement of child pornography, The Columbian reported.
Punt, 39, also was sentenced Monday to a lifetime of supervised release, and he will be required to register as a sex offender.
Posing as a teenage boy, Punt used the messaging apps Kik and Snapchat to contact teens and convince them to send sexual photos, according to a news release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
The victims did not know Punt was recording their videos and images on a second phone. He then demanded additional photos and videos, and threatened to distribute what he already had to the victims’ classmates or community if they didn’t comply, officials said.
In December 2018, a victim in New York went to the police, who traced the contact back to Punt. His electronic devices were seized and his cellphone was found to contain hundreds of sexually explicit photos and videos, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office. He was arrested in May 2019.
Victims have been identified in New York, Arkansas, California, Texas, Nevada, Kentucky, Pennsylvania and West Virginia. The victims were between 12 and 16 years old, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
Donald Voiret, special agent in charge for the FBI Seattle, said in the news release he would encourage parents to engage with their children about the risks of online predators.
The scheme was investigated by the Vancouver Police Department’s Digital Evidence Cybercrime Unit, in conjunction with Homeland Security Investigations.
Colorado
Judge dismisses police challenge to Denver’s vaccine mandate
DENVER (AP) — A judge on Wednesday dismissed an attempt by a group of Denver police officers to block the city’s vaccine mandate a day before it’s set to take affect.
In a lawsuit filed last week, seven officers claimed that the city did not have the authority to impose the mandate under a local disaster emergency declared by Mayor Michael Hancock at the beginning of the pandemic, noting that Democratic Gov. Jared Polis rescinded his statewide emergency pandemic order in July. They claim the city should have instead followed the more drawn out process laid out in state law to impose regulations.
However, Judge Shelley Gilman ruled that law only applies to state agencies. Under city law, the officers should have appealed the vaccine mandate, first issued on Aug. 2, at the city level before filing a lawsuit. Since they did not, Gilman said she had no jurisdiction to decide the case and dismissed it.
Under the city’s public health order, updated Sept. 1, all city employees, workers in public and private schools and people who work for private employers such as hospitals, homeless shelters, childcare centers must show proof that they are vaccinated by Thursday. City workers face dismissal if they do not comply.
Louisiana
Man faces murder charge in infant’s death
THIBODAUX, La. (AP) — A Louisiana man faces a murder charge in the death of his infant daughter, the Lafourche Parish Sheriff’s Office said.
Jake Guidry, 26, told deputies he hit 11-month-old Zabria Guidry “too hard,” Sheriff Craig Webre said in a news release Tuesday.
Early Tuesday, deputies did a welfare check on the child at the request of the child’s mother. Guidry was immediately arrested. Deputies located the body of the deceased child in the rear cargo area of Guidry’s sport utility vehicle,
Guidry was arrested on a charge of second-degree murder. He’s being held at the Lafourche Parish Correctional Complex in Thibodaux. Bond was set at $1 million. It was unknown if he has an attorney who could speak on his behalf.
Nevada
Man who admitted killing trooper gets life in prison
ELY, Nev. (AP) — A 67-year-old Nevada man with acknowledged bipolar disorder was sentenced Tuesday to life in prison without parole for ambushing and killing a veteran highway patrol sergeant on a remote state highway in March 2020.
John Leonard Dabritz, a former resident of the small White Pine County mining town of Ruth, avoided a death penalty trial when he changed his plea in July to guilty but mentally ill in the death of Sgt. Ben Jenkins, a decorated highway patrol officer from Elko.
White Pine County District Judge Steve Dobrescu told Dabritz at sentencing the shooting was “haunting” and “pure evil,” the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported.
“Whatever was driving or not driving you makes no difference,” the judge said. “You took the life of a man who stopped to help you.”
White Pine County District Attorney James Beecher had said he agreed to let Dabritz withdraw his earlier plea of not guilty by reason of insanity and avoid a trial to provide Jenkins’ family “with swift and final closure, without protracted appeals or requiring them to relive the horrific incident.”
Dabritz, shackled and dressed in orange jail scrubs, was swiftly led away by officers after sentencing.
Dabritz was previously diagnosed with bipolar disorder and held in custody at the Northern Nevada Correctional Center in Carson City.
He underwent about two months of treatment at a psychiatric facility before he was deemed competent last year to stand trial on murder, arson, vehicle and firearms theft charges.
Authorities said Dabritz was heavily armed and fled with Jenkins’ uniform and patrol pickup truck before crashing and surrendering as troopers and sheriffs deputies arrived not far from the White Pine-Lincoln County line.
Following the killing, the Review-Journal reported that Dabritz spent weeks leading up to the shooting on a paranoid quest to warn people of his theory that COVID-19 was spreading through the water and sewer systems.
He was treated at William Bee Ririe Hospital in Ely and at a behavioral health hospital in Las Vegas before his release one week before Jenkins was killed.
Jenkins, a 47-year-old married father of four, won the highway patrol’s highest honor, the Gold Medal of Valor, in 2011.
Officials said he stopped to check on an apparently stranded vehicle just before dawn on U.S. Highway 93 outside Ely — more than 250 miles (400 kilometers) north of Las Vegas.
Jenkins was the ninth NHP officer killed in the line of duty since 1911. A 10th, Trooper Micah May, died July 29 — just days after Dabritz changed his plea — when he was struck by a vehicle driven by an armed carjacking suspect trying to elude troopers on a busy freeway near the Las Vegas Strip.
Massachusetts
High court: County jails did not violate inmate rights
BOSTON (AP) — The highest court in Massachusetts has rejected a claim that county jails across the state violated the due process rights of inmates during the coronavirus pandemic.
The state public defenders agency and the state chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union argued that the sheriffs who run the jails failed to implement regular across-the-board COVID-19 testing, and that they had not adequately followed an earlier court ruling to reduce their inmate populations, The Salem News reported.
The Supreme Judicial Court in Tuesday’s decision acknowledged the risks COVID-19 posed to inmates, but said under the circumstances, the responses of the 13 county sheriffs “are not unreasonable.”
“COVID came with unprecedented challenges for facilities like ours and we knew we would not escape the clutches of this dangerously virulent illness, but we prepared the best we could to ensure the safety of all who work and live here,” Essex County Sheriff Kevin Coppinger said in an email. “We listened to the experts. We adapted how we do business. We cleaned and sanitized 24 hours a day, seven days a week and we weathered the storm.”
The public defender’s agency, the Committee for Public Counsel Services, had no response to the decision on Tuesday, a spokesperson said.
Texas
Nurse faces capital murder trial for 4 patient deaths
TYLER, Texas (AP) — A defense attorney for a former nurse accused of killing four patients at an East Texas hospital in 2017 told jurors Tuesday that his client was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time, while a prosecutor called him “a serial killer” who found the perfect place to hide.
William George Davis, 37, of Hallsville, is accused of injecting air into the arteries of four patients recovering from heart surgery at the Christus Trinity Mother Frances Hospital in Tyler, killing John Lafferty, Ronald Clark, Christopher Greenway and Joseph Kalina. His capital murder trial in Tyler began Tuesday with a not-guilty plea.
“No one expects this is going to happen to them — certainly not in a hospital,” Smith County District Jacob Putnam told jurors during opening statements. “We’re going to ask you to find him guilty of capital murder because that’s what he did.”
Putnam noted that each of the four patients was in stable condition after their surgery until they all suffered stroke-like symptoms, with CT scans showed abnormal arterial spaces in their brains. Davis was the only nurse on duty at the time, he said.
“It turns out a hospital is the perfect place for a serial killer to hide,” Putnam said.
Defense attorney Phillip Hayes portrayed Davis as an innocent victim of circumstance. Hayes also asserted that strokes were not uncommon occurrences in intensive-care units, where all four patients were receiving care.
Testimony is to resume Wednesday morning, with the trial expected to take four to six weeks to complete, Putnam said.
Massachusetts
Man pleads guilty to killing 3 women found dead in his home
SPRINGFIELD, Mass. (AP) — A Massachusetts man accused of killing three women whose bodies were found at his home in 2018 and charged with sexually assaulting and kidnapping a number of other women pleaded guilty in a reversal on Tuesday.
Stewart Weldon changed his not guilty plea to guilty on 39 charges during a hearing at Hampden County Superior Court in Springfield. The 44-year-old Springfield resident’s plea change came just weeks before his trial was scheduled to start.
“I just want to close this case,” he said in court.
Weldon, who has been held without bail since his arraignment, originally faced more than 50 criminal charges, but his lawyers and prosecutors agreed on 39 of those charges in a plea deal, WWLP-TV reports. He’ll be sentenced Thursday.
The bodies of Ernestine Ryans, 47, America Lyden, 34, both of Springfield, and Kayla Escalante, 27, of neighboring Ludlow, were found after Weldon was pulled over in May 2018 and a woman in his car said she had been held against her will, beaten and sexually assaulted.
Two of the dead women had been reported missing by their families. The home in Springfield belonged to Weldon’s mother.
The woman in Weldon’s car said he held her captive for a month, sexually assaulted her and beat her with a hammer and other objects, police said.
“Thank you for saving my life,” the woman told officers, according to a police report. “I never thought I would get away.”
The woman was taken to a hospital with what police called “grotesque and violent” injuries, including stab wounds to her abdomen, marks from being hit with a blunt object and a leg infection, authorities said.
The Associated Press does not typically name potential victims of sexual assault unless they have agreed or spoken publicly.
Weldon’s trial was supposed to start last April but was postponed because of the pandemic. The charges against him involved not just the three women found at his home in May, but 11 alleged victims.
West Virginia
Courts expanding safety and access project to Ohio County
WHEELING, W.Va. (AP) — A new program launched by West Virginia’s Supreme Court that uses technology to promote safety and access in cases involving sexual assault and domestic violence is expanding to Ohio County, officials said.
The new system allows victims of domestic violence and sexual assault to file petitions for protective orders without going to a courthouse. Officials plan to test it Wednesday in Judge Heather Wood’s courtroom in Wheeling, a statement from the Supreme Court said. The system is expected to be operational in Ohio County beginning on Oct. 4.
Ohio County is the second community to pilot the program, which was introduced last month in Cabell County as a way to address safety concerns. The only option before the program was for victims to appear in person at the courthouse.
“This new system will provide an option to victims to help keep them safe from the people they allege assaulted them. We also are ensuring every person’s constitutional rights are protected,” Chief Justice Evan Jenkins said.
