Court Digest

Massachusetts
Sex offender being charged in slaying of woman 3 decades ago
BOSTON (AP) — A convicted sex offender is being charged in the killing of a woman whose body was found in the basement of a Boston building more than three decades ago, according to Suffolk County District Attorney Rachael Rollins.

Richard Vega, 59, faces a murder charge and is set to be arraigned in Suffolk Superior Court this month. He is already being held after a jury previously determined he was sexually dangerous.

Prosecutors say DNA evidence linked Vega to the 1988 killing of 21-year-old Judy Chamberlain, whose body was found in a building in what is now Boston’s Seaport neighborhood. Police found that she had been strangled and sexually assaulted.

Vega was identified as a suspect in 2011 after a federal database matched his DNA profile to evidence from the 1988 killing, according to Rollins’ office, but prosecutors at the time did not think they had enough evidence to bring charges.

Vega had been required to submit a DNA sample after he was convicted of rape in a 1987 attack on an elderly woman in Revere.

Vega was sentenced to up to 20 years in prison for the 1987 attack, and a jury in 2008 found that he was sexually dangerous and should remain at a corrections facility.

Investigators recently collected new evidence in the case allowing them to bring the case to a Suffolk County grand jury, prosecutors said. A jury returned an indictment Aug. 30 charging Vega with Chamberlain’s murder.
It was not immediately clear if Vega has obtained an attorney for the case.

“Ms. Chamberlain’s family has been waiting 33 years for answers,” Rollins said in a statement. “We were finally able to offer those answers some three decades later. Ms. Chamberlain’s life mattered.”

The investigation got fresh attention from authorities as part of a recent effort to solve Boston-area cold cases dating to the 1960s. Rollins started the initiative, known as the Project for Unsolved Suffolk Homicides, when she took office in 2019.

The effort has led to murder indictments in two other killings, from 1995 and 1980, according to the district attorney’s office.

Vermont
Judge: Law school can hide murals some find racially offensive
ROYALTON, Vt. (AP) — A federal judge has ruled that Vermont Law School can conceal two large murals that some members of the school community find racially offensive.

The Valley News reports the judge granted the school’s request to dismiss a lawsuit by the artist, ruling last week that the school’s plan to hide the murals behind a wall of acoustic tiles doesn’t violate the federal Visual Artists Rights Act. They are currently covered by drop cloths.

Lawyers for artist Samuel Kerson said he will appeal.

Kerson painted the murals entitled “Vermont, The Underground Railroad” and “Vermont and the Fugitive Slave” for the school on two walls inside a building in 1994. Last year the school said it would paint over them and, when the artist objected, said it would instead cover the murals with the tiles.

“Despite its beneficent intentions, the mural has not aged well. Its depiction of African Americans strikes some viewers as caricatured and offensive, and the mural has become a source of discord and distraction at Vermont Law School — an institution whose explicit mission it is to educate students in a diverse community,” the school said in a court filing in response Kerson’s lawsuit.

Lawyers for Kerson, who lives in Quebec, argued that the artwork is protected by the Visual Artists Rights Act that safeguards artists’ works from “distortion, mutilation, or other modification,” which would be prejudicial to their honor or reputation.

U.S. District Court Judge Geoffrey Crawford disagreed, ruling that once the wall is in place, “The murals will have the same status as a portrait or bust that is removed from public exhibition and placed in storage.”

Justin Barnard, a lawyer for the school, said they’re pleased the court agrees that the act doesn’t compel an owner to display artwork against its wishes.

In a statement, Kerson’s lawyers, Steven Hyman and Richard Rubin, said the judge ignored the clear intent of the act. Kerson declined to comment beyond the statement from his lawyers.

Georgia
Judge: Lawyer can’t represent indicted distict attorney at trial
COLUMBUS, Ga. (AP) — A judge Monday disqualified a lawyer from representing an indicted Georgia district attorney in an upcoming trial.

Superior Court Judge Katherine Lumsden removed Christopher Breault from representing Columbus-area District Attorney Mark Jones, local news outlets report, because Breault could be a witness in the trial scheduled to start Nov. 8.

The state attorney general’s office obtained an indictment Sept. 7, accusing Jones of trying to influence a police officer’s testimony, offering bribes to prosecutors in his office and trying to influence and prevent the testimony of a crime victim.

Gov. Brian Kemp then suspended Jones from office after a panel ruled the indictment impaired Jones’ ability to perform his duty. Jones would be removed if convicted.

Jones took office in January overseeing a circuit including Muscogee, Harris, Chattahoochee, Marion, Talbot and Taylor counties in west Georgia.

Judge Lumsden wrote that only Breault could testify about an April Facebook message prosecutors say Andrew Loyd received from Breault. Loyd was a witness in a murder case that ended in mistrial. The judge said Breault wrote to Loyd that if he aided the prosecution, Jones would dismiss charges against Loyd. Lumsden said Breault threatened that Jones would prosecute Loyd and send him to prison if he did not cooperate.

“The use of the defendant’s private lawyer/friend (not law enforcement or the DA’s investigator) to find and persuade a witness is unheard of and fraught with ethical problems,” the judge wrote.

Lumsden also ruled in favor of prosecutors on several other issued. She says prosecutors can use police body camera footage from outside a bar where Jones is accused of trying to influence an officer’s testimony. Lumsden ruled Jones can’t tell jurors he was suspended from office or would be removed if convicted.

Jones also can’t claim he was singled out for prosecution, the judge ruled, or tell jurors about a September trial where he was accused of damaging government property in a May 2020 campaign video. The video included stunt driving moves, including cars driving in doughnuts with smoking tires in the parking lot of the Columbus Civic Center.

After a mistrial, the prosecutor dismissed the charges.

Jones is charged in another unrelated case with DUI, reckless driving and causing injury following a November 2019 crash in which police said Jones was driving drunk. That case remains pending.

Washington
Man sentenced for raping 6-year-old child
TACOMA, Wash. (AP) — A 63-year-old Port Townsend, Washington, man was sentenced Monday to more than eight years in prison and 10 years of supervised release for raping a 6-year-old child while on a vacation in Canada.

John Timothy Whicher pleaded guilty to engaging in illicit sexual conduct in a foreign place in February 2021, prosecutors said. At the sentencing hearing, U.S. District Judge Benjamin Settle said, the victim “has a life sentence.
This kind of horrendous assault follows a victim through their entire life.”

“Child sexual abuse has been linked to long-term trauma, health and social problems for victims, including addiction and suicide risk,” U.S. Attorney Nick Brown said in a press release. “The conduct in this case was a shocking betrayal to the child and the child’s family. Law enforcement both here and in Canada worked collaboratively seeking justice in this case.

Whicher took the 6-year-old child to Ontario, Canada to stay at a family cabin in August 2017, according to court records. When the child returned from the trip, the child told a parent about the sexual molestation, saying Whicher said to keep it a secret. The parent confronted Whicher and reported the conduct to the Port Townsend Police.

Missouri
Landlord charged in tenant’s death after argument over heat
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — A Kansas City landlord has been charged in the stabbing death of one of his tenants, apparently after an argument over heating at the victim’s residence.

Clay County prosecutors Monday charged Gordon McBeth, 44, with second-degree murder and armed criminal action after he allegedly stabbed Darryl Gilland to death on Friday at a home in northern Kansas City.

Police who were called to the home found a bystander holding McBeth at gunpoint. Witnesses told police McBeth had stabbed Gilland, according to a probable cause statement.

A medical examiner reported that Gilland, who was dead at the scene, had been stabbed more than 30 times, KSHB-TV reported.

Gilland’s girlfriend told police the couple was working with McBeth on a problem with the heater at their residence when his responses became aggressive, according to the probable cause statement.

She told police that McBeth attacked Gilland with a hunting knife without provocation after arriving at the residence, the statement said.

McBeth was being held on $1 million bond. Online court records do not name an attorney for McBeth.

Oklahoma
State Supreme Court blocks 3 new anti-abortion laws
OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — Oklahoma’s Supreme Court on Monday blocked three anti-abortion laws that were scheduled to take effect Nov. 1 that abortion rights supporters say would have devastated abortion access in the state.

In a 5-3 ruling , the court granted a temporary injunction that keeps the laws from taking effect. All three appointees of Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt dissented, and one judge didn’t vote.

One law would have required all doctors who perform abortions in Oklahoma to be board certified in obstetrics and gynecology, which would have forced about half the abortion providers in Oklahoma to stop providing abortions. The other two would create new restrictions on medication-induced abortions.

“The Oklahoma Supreme Court recognized that these laws would cause irreparable harm to Oklahomans,” Nancy Northup, president and CEO of the New York-based Center for Reproductive Rights, which helped challenge the laws, said in a statement. “All of these laws have the same goal: to make it harder to get an abortion in Oklahoma. We will continue to fight in court to ensure these laws are struck down for good. Politicians should not be meddling in the private health decisions of Oklahomans.”

A spokeswoman for Attorney General John O’Connor didn’t immediately comment on the high court’s ruling.

Earlier this month, a district court judge temporarily blocked two other new anti-abortion laws from taking effect next month, including a measure similar to a Texas abortion ban that effectively bans the procedure after about six weeks of pregnancy.

But District Judge Cindy Truong allowed the three other anti-abortion laws to take effect Nov. 1, prompting the appeal to the state Supreme Court.

Abortion clinics in Oklahoma already are being overwhelmed by patients from Texas, where the U.S. Supreme Court allowed a law to take effect on Sept. 1 that made it illegal to perform abortions once medical professionals can detect cardiac activity, which is usually around the sixth week of pregnancy.

About 11 women from Texas received abortion services at the Trust Women clinic in Oklahoma City in August. That number increased to 110 last month, said Rebecca Tong, co-executive director of Trust Women. Similar increases are being reported at abortion clinics in Colorado, Kansas, Louisiana and New Mexico.

Florida
Man guilty of posting bomb instructions for terrorists
MIAMI (AP) — A South Florida man has been convicted of posting bomb-making instructions on the internet for people who he believed were Islamic terrorists.

Samuel Baptiste, 29, pleaded guilty Friday in Miami federal court to attempting to provide material support to terrorists, according to court records. He faces up to 15 years in prison at a sentencing hearing scheduled for Jan. 5.

According to an indictment, Baptiste posted documents online in November 2016 that included “Instructions: How to Make a Homemade Pipe Bomb,” “Pipe Bombs,” “Improvised Explosive Devices” and “Improvised Munitions Black Book, Volume 1.” Prosecutors said Baptiste posted the information for people who he believed were acting on behalf of the Islamic State terrorist group.

Baptiste was previously sentenced to six years and eight months in prison for federal firearms charges.