Court Digest

Washington
Jury finds former prison guard guilty of child rape
EVERETT, Wash. (AP) — A jury has found a former Monroe prison guard guilty of child rape.

It took jurors in Snohomis County Superior Court less than three hours of deliberation Wednesday to convict Jason Dominguez of second-degree rape of a child, third-degree rape of a child and communication with a minor for immoral purposes, The Daily Herald reported.

According to witness testimony, Dominguez sent sexual messages over Facebook to a girl when she was in her early teens that he met when he was a Girl Scouts volunteer. Charging papers say the messages escalated to physical abuse from 2017 to 2019.

Dominguez, 36, declined to testify.

The girl’s mother testified about finding the messages, reporting them to police and said the girl told detectives about the abuse.

The teen estimated the abuse happened 10 to 12 times when she visited Dominguez and his kids.

Dominguez has remained behind bars since his arrest in October 2019, unable to post $250,000 bail.

The state rested its case Wednesday morning.

Seconds later, the defense rested without calling any witness.

In closing arguments, the prosecutor painted Dominguez as a manipulator and a predator who took advantage of someone who needed support.

Defense attorney Eli Jacobsen acknowledged Dominguez had an infatuation with the teen but asserted the sexual messages were fantasy, not reality.

Sentencing is set for Nov. 16.

Massachusetts
Woman sentenced for performing illegal silicone injections
BOSTON (AP) — A Massachusetts woman who was paid by customers for illegal face and buttock injections using potentially deadly silicone oil has been sentenced to two years in prison, according to federal prosecutors.

Gladys Araceli Ceron, 73, of North Andover, was also sentenced Wednesday to two years of probation and ordered to pay restitution in an amount to be determined by a judge at a later date.

Ceron pleaded guilty in April to performing illegal buttock or face wrinkle injections on five customers, but the U.S. attorney’s office in Massachusetts estimated that from 2004 until 2019 she may have had hundreds or even thousands of customers at her Lawrence business.

She used a material that she obtained from a source in Florida that was determined by lab tests to contain silicone oil, a substance that the Food and Drug Administration warns can travel through blood vessels and cause permanent disfigurement, a stroke, or death, prosecutors said.

“For 15 years, Ms. Ceron chose to make money by injecting her cosmetics customers with toxic silicone — all the while knowing that by doing so she was exposing them to serious harm, disfiguration and potentially death,” acting U.S. Attorney Nathaniel Mendell said in a statement.

Michigan
Police: 2 men fired at state police helicopter
FLINT, Mich. (AP) — Two Flint men face terrorism charges for allegedly firing gunshots at a Michigan State Police helicopter as it hovered over a nature area while troopers were investigating reported gunfire.

David Cox and Jeremy Engelman, both 26, were arraigned Tuesday in Genesee District Court on charges of terrorism, assault with intent to murder, attempted malicious destruction of police property, and using a firearm during the commission of a felony.

A judge ordered Cox and Engelman held at the county jail on a $50,000 bond, and both men requested court-appointed attorneys to represent them.

Nathaniel Perry, the county’s chief public defender, said Wednesday that attorneys would be appointed Thursday for the men and the earliest those attorneys might comment on the case would be Friday.

Cox and Engelman were arrested early Saturday after state police said they both fired several shots at a state police helicopter helping local police investigate a report of shots fired.

Two troopers in the helicopter spotted the men on a bridge at the Happy Hollow Nature Area and as the aircraft hovered over the area, one of the men pointed a firearm and fired several shots before handing the weapon to the second man, who also fired shots, police said.

The troopers in the helicopter directed officers on the ground to the men, and they arrested Engelmann and Cox and recovered a firearm, police said. Neither trooper was injured and the helicopter was not damaged by gunfire.

Genesee County Prosecutor David Leyton said video taken from the helicopter shows the two men pointing at the aircraft and shooting at it.

“I don’t think there was any doubt they were intending to shoot up at the helicopter,” he told WJRT-TV.

New Mexico
Ankle monitor GPS used to find wife’s body, arrest husband
SILVER CITY, N,M. (AP) — A New Mexico man on probation who had to wear an ankle bracelet to monitor his movements has been arrested in the fatal beating of his wife with an ax after authorities used data from the bracelet to find her body in a national forest where the couple went to cut firewood, state police said Wednesday.

Armando Zamora, 35, was charged with murder after being arrested and jailed last Sunday on suspicion of killing Erica Zamora, 39, after her body was found in the Gila National Forest, a New Mexico State Police statement said.

Erica Zamora was reported missing Friday after she had not been heard from since Sept. 26, the day the couple went to the nearby forest, the statement said.

After learning that Armando Zamora wore an ankle monitor because of a 2019 conviction for sexual contact with a minor, investigators checked GPS coordinates to see where for he had been recently. including the wood cutting site, the statement said.

“A sergeant searched the area and located a deceased female matching the description of Erica Zamora,” the state police statement said.

Armando Zamora had told investigators he last saw his wife on Sept. 28 when he dropped her at her separate residence but on Sunday after her body was found, he “admitted to beating Erica to death” with an ax, the statement said.

According to a police report, Armando Zamora told investigators the couple argued on the drive to the forest and that he killed her after she punched him at the wood cutting site, KOAT-TV  reported.

The couple had a pending divorce case that was initiated by Armando Zamora in June, according to court records.

Court records for the criminal and the divorce cases did not list an attorney who could comment on behalf of Armando Zamora, who is from the small community of Santa Clara.

California
Man gets 8 life sentences for molesting kids
VISTA, Calif. (AP) — A Southern California man who molested girls as young as 3 years old and recorded some of the assaults was sentenced this week to eight life sentences without possibility of parole.

Samuel Cabrera Jr., 28, of Carlsbad, received an additional sentence of more than 300 years during his Monday court hearing in Vista, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported.

Prosecutors said that between early 2014 and mid-2016, Cabrera abused four children between the ages of 3 and 7, including a developmentally delayed youngster who couldn’t speak or dress herself.

The children were supplied to him by a babysitter who was Cabrera’s girlfriend at the time, prosecutors allege.

Cabrera also made hundreds of videos of the abuse, authorities said.

He was convicted in 2019 of 35 molestation-related charges.

Cabrera’s then-girlfriend, Brittney Lyon of San Marcos, who advertised her services on a babysitting website, is awaiting trial on related charges. It wasn’t immediately clear whether she had an attorney to speak on her behalf.

Indiana
Former mayor faces bribery sentencing next month
INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — A former Indiana mayor is set to find out his punishment next month on federal charges of taking a $5,000 bribe in exchange for steering city projects to a contractor.

Former Muncie Mayor Dennis Tyler reached an agreement with federal prosecutors in May to plead guilty to a count of theft of government funds.

In the plea agreement, Tyler admitted to receiving the bribe in 2015 to direct nearly $110,000 in demolition work to an unnamed company. The work was part of an $8.3 million housing development partly funded by federal grants intended for military veterans who were homeless.

The plea agreement calls for Tyler to pay restitution while leaving the length of any prison sentence up to U.S. District Court Judge James Sweeney at a Nov. 10 hearing in Indianapolis, The (Muncie) Star Press reported.
The theft charge carries a maximum 10 years in prison.

Tyler, a Democrat, was Muncie’s mayor for eight years, first winning election in 2011 after seven years as a state legislator. He did not seek reelection in 2019 and was indicted in the bribery case just weeks before his term ended.

Six other people charged after a federal probe of corruption in the Muncie Sanitary District and Tyler’s administration have signed plea agreements and are awaiting sentencing.

Pennsylvania
Ex-police chief pleads guilty to sex offender violation
KITTANNING, Pa. (AP) — A former Leechburg police chief arrested in a child predator sting has pleaded guilty to failing to properly register as a sex offender.

Michael Diebold, 44, entered the plea Wednesday. He was charged with failing to provide accurate information when he registered as a sex offender.

Diebold was previously arrested in a child predator sting for soliciting sex online from a state trooper who posed as a 14-year-old girl.

He pleaded guilty in December 2018 to statutory sexual assault, attempted statutory sexual assault, unlawful restraint and criminal use of a communications device.

Diebold was sentenced to nine to 23 months in jail and three years probation. The former police chief also was required to register as a sex offender and refrain from using the internet for anything other than work.

South Dakota
Teenager found guilty of murder in fatal shooting
RAPID CITY, S.D. (AP) — A teenager accused in a fatal shooting in Rapid City more than three years ago has been found guilty of second-degree murder by a jury in Pennington County.

Seventeen-year-old Ronald Black Cloud, who was 14 when the shooting occurred, was tried in adult court for the death of 43-year-old Nathan Graham.

During closing arguments Wednesday, Deputy State’s Attorney Lara Roetzel told jurors that Black Cloud acted without regard for human life, noting that he and his friend, Ross Johnson, were trespassing on Graham’s property the night of the shooting and were told to leave but didn’t.

The two had went to Graham’s house looking for Graham’s stepson, despite Johnson knowing that he was not allowed at the home.

Roetzel also argued that neither Black Cloud’s nor Johnson’s safety was being threatened as Graham had been walking away from the two before he was shot by Black Cloud at Johnson’s instruction, the Rapid City Journal reported.

A sentencing date for Black Cloud has not been set.

 Johnson was sentenced to 20 years in prison in June after he pleaded guilty to aggravated assault and being an accessory to the second-degree murder of Graham.

Ohio
Divided court upholds death sentence for man who killed 4
COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — The brutal killing of four people, including an 8-year-old child, justified the death sentence for an Ohio man and outweighed evidence presented on his behalf including a variety of mental health diagnoses, a divided Ohio Supreme Court ruled Thursday.

In 2017, Arron Lawson killed his adult cousin, her son, her mother and her stepfather, after the cousin broke off an affair with Lawson, according to court documents. A three-judge panel sentenced Lawson to death in 2019.

At different times, Lawson, 27, was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, depression, and PTSD, and did not receive adequate treatment for those conditions, Justice Sharon Kennedy wrote for the 5-2 majority. His lawyers also argued he was abused as a child. But the facts of the quadruple killing justify a death sentence, Kennedy concluded.

In January, Republican Gov. Mike DeWine signed a bill into law banning the execution of the severely mentally ill, including killers diagnosed with schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, bipolar disorder or delusional disorder at the time of their crimes.

Justice Michael Donnelly “reluctantly concurred” with upholding Lawson’s death sentence. But he noted that Lawson has the ability to appeal under the new mental illness law.