Court Digest

New Jersey
Hate crime trial of former police chief ends in mistrial

CAMDEN, N.J. (AP) — A retrial in the hate-crime case against a former New Jersey police chief ended without a verdict Wednesday.

A federal judge declared a mistrial after jurors couldn’t reach a verdict in the trial of Frank Nucera, the former police chief of Bordentown, near Trenton. Nucera faced one count each of hate crime assault and deprivation of civil rights, for allegedly slamming a handcuffed Black man’s head into a doorjamb in 2016 while two officers were escorting the man from a hotel. Nucera had pleaded not guilty.

The jury had begun deliberating Monday afternoon. In 2019, a separate jury deadlocked on the same charges but convicted Nucera of lying to the FBI, and he was sentenced to 28 months in prison on that count.

Nucera has remained free on bail as the case has progressed. He retired in 2017 during the FBI investigation.

Through a spokesperson, the U.S. attorney’s office didn’t comment on the mistrial and said a decision hadn’t been made on whether to retry Nucera a third time.

Nucera’s attorney, Rocco Cipparone, said in an email that the hung jury “confirms what we always contended: that there is substantial reasonable doubt as to the allegations that Mr. Nucera used excessive force on Mr. Stroye, did so because of his race, or that he even physically struck Mr. Stroye at all.

“It is our cautious hope that after almost five years of litigation including many motions, two lengthy hard litigated trials resulting in two mistrials, with the nature of the evidence and testimony, the government will choose not to retry Mr. Nucera for a third time,” Cipparone added.

New York
Maxwell jurors hear expert testimony about sexual predators

NEW YORK (AP) — Jurors at Ghislaine Maxwell’s trial got a psychologist’s overview Thursday of how sexual predators gradually lure and ensnare child victims, a view that defense lawyers tried to keep out of the British socialite’s sex trafficking trial.

“Child sexual abuse is a process,” Lisa Rocchio testified, providing expert perspective but no particulars about the accusers in the case against Maxwell. She is charged with helping to recruit underage teenage girls into sexual abuse by the late financier Jeffrey Epstein.

Maxwell, 59, denies the allegations, and her lawyers say prosecutors are going after her because they can’t try Epstein. He killed himself in 2019 while jailed on sex trafficking charges.

Maxwell was Epstein’s onetime girlfriend and, later, employee. Prosecutors said she took the girls on shopping trips and movie outings, talked to them about their lives and encouraged them to accept financial help from him.

The government also says she also helped to create a sexualized atmosphere by talking with the girls about sex and encouraging them to give Epstein massages, and one accuser testified this week  that she had sexual interactions with Epstein at age 14 with Maxwell in the room and sometimes participating. Maxwell’s lawyers pointed to FBI documents  that said the now-adult woman, who testified under a pseudonym, gave the government a different account in 2019; she questioned the documents’ accuracy.

Rocchio she had evaluated hundreds of child sexual abuse victims, though she has never interviewed any of Maxwell’s accusers.

The psychologist told the jury that abusers often groom their victims in a progression that includes giving presents, building a sense of trust and gradually introducing more sexualized talk and touching. Victims often don’t come forward right away, she said.

Before the trial, Maxwell’s lawyers tried unsuccessfully to block Rocchio’s testimony, saying it didn’t have enough scientific grounding.

After she took the stand, defense lawyer Jeffrey Pagliuca suggested that some things she described as grooming — such as giving gifts, taking children to special places or paying them attention — could also be innocuous.

He recalled, for example, his grandfather taking him to the Bronx Zoo as a child.

“I’m assuming he wasn’t taking you there for sexual abuse,” Rocchio retorted.

Simply being nice to someone isn’t grooming, she said, “in the context of a healthy and normal relationship.”


Maine
Man who put razor blades in pizza dough sentenced to federal prison

PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — A man accused of putting razor blades and screws in pizza dough at supermarkets in Maine and New Hampshire was sentenced Thursday to four years and nine months in federal prison.

The sentencing of Nicholas Mitchell, 39, of Dover, New Hampshire, followed an agreement with prosecutors in which he pleaded guilty in June to one of two counts of tampering with a consumer product. He also must pay nearly $230,000 in restitution to Hannaford Supermarkets.

The hearing proceeded even though Mitchell was recovering from a recent bout of COVID-19 contracted in jail.

The judge told him the nature of the crime spread fear in the community and Mitchell tearfully apologized for his actions.

Mitchell was arrested in October 2020 after razor blades were found in pizza dough sold at a Hannaford store in Saco.

Three customers bought the tainted product in Saco and discovered the blades hidden in the dough, prosecutors said. Product tampering also occurred at Hannaford stores in Sanford, Maine, and Dover, New Hampshire, prompting investigations by police department in those communities, as well.

Mitchell was a former employee of It’ll Be Pizza. The Scarborough, Maine, company makes several brands of dough, including the Portland Pie Co. dough that was allegedly tampered with.

Court documents indicated that Mitchell’s life spiraled out of control during the pandemic when his girlfriend lost her hair salon and Mitchell was arrested following a domestic disturbance, leaving him homeless and living in his car. He was later fired from his job at It’ll Be Pizza.

Under the agreement, Mitchell agreed not to appeal a sentence that is no greater than four years and nine months, according to court documents. The maximum penalty for product tampering is 10 years in prison.


Louisiana
Ex-sheriff, facing life for rapes, pleads guilty to bribery

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — A former Louisiana sheriff pleaded guilty to a federal bribery charge on Wednesday, weeks after a state jury convicted him of sexually abusing boys.

Rodney J. “Jack” Strain, who lost a reelection bid in 2015 after five terms as St. Tammany Parish’s sheriff, appeared in court in shackles and an orange prison jumpsuit, news outlets reported.

Federal prosecutors dropped 15 other charges when Strain pleaded guilty to a single count of bribery involving federal funds. Strain used his authority as sheriff to try to steer profits from a $1 million work-release contract to himself, his family and two of his top deputies.

Judge Jane Triche Milazzo can also order Strain to pay restitution when she sentences him, the plea agreement noted.

Loyola Law Professor Dane Ciolino told WWL-TV that he wasn’t surprised by the plea agreement, since Strain faces mandatory life sentences in the state case.

The corruption scheme involved an inmate work-release program that Strain made private. He then arranged to have two of his top deputies profit from it, hiding their involvement by having an adult child of each sign on as owners, according to Strain’s sworn statement.

Court documents in one deputy’s plea agreement said he had been a child sex victim of Strain’s, starting before he was 12 years old, The Times-Picayune / The New Orleans Advocate reported.  That victim said that, as an adult, he had gone to work for Strain at the sheriff’s office when he was deeply in debt. The man said Strain pressured him to join the work-release scheme.

Strain’s statement said the plotters also brought in a third person who had the credentials the deputies’ children lacked and actually ran the program. That person had to pay $30,000 a year to a fourth person for a no-show job, according to the document.

The no-show job went to another victim of Strain’s, the newspaper reported.

The deputies’ children received nearly $1.4 million, funneling much of that back to their fathers, who paid off Strain, according to the court document.

The bribery charge carries up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. Milazzo scheduled sentencing for March 9.

Strain is to be sentenced Jan. 18 on the sex charges. Those include four counts of aggravated rape, which carries a mandatory life sentence.

Arthur “Buddy” Lemann, a defense attorney who is not involved in either case, told the newspaper that he thinks Strain will appeal the sex charges, especially since two of the rape charges involve incidents when Strain was a juvenile.

Strain also was convicted Nov. 8 on two counts of aggravated incest and one each of indecent behavior with a juvenile and sexual battery.

The incest charges carry sentences of up to 20 years.

California
Man who killed officer gets life without parole

WHITTIER, Calif. (AP) — A Southern California gang member who fatally shot a man and then killed a police officer and wounded another in a Los Angeles suburb was sentenced Wednesday to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Michael Mejia, 30, was convicted in September of first-degree murder and other felonies for the 2017 killings.

Noting that Mejia has shown no remorse, Judge Roger Ito said he would impose the maximum sentence, the Southern California News Group reported.

“He is not contrite. He is quite proud. It is extraordinary to the court that level of callousness,” Ito said.

In addition to two life without parole sentences, Ito also sentenced Mejia to a total of 115 years to life and 34 years and four months for the various other crimes.

Mejia’s attorney said during the trial that the gang member and parolee was on drugs when he shot and killed Roy Torres, 47, in East Los Angeles on Feb. 20, 2017.

Prosecutors said Mejia then stole Torres’s car and then crashed it in nearby Whittier.

When Whittier police responded, prosecutors said, Mejia opened fire, killing Officer Keith Boyer and wounding another officer before he was wounded.

Boyer, 53, was the first Whittier police officer killed in the line of duty since 1979.

Ohio
Priest pleads guilty to raping altar boy

CINCINNATI (AP) — A Roman Catholic priest in Ohio on Thursday pleaded guilty to raping an altar boy during a three-year period in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Under terms of a plea agreement, Father Geoff Drew, 59, will be sentenced to seven years in prison and must register as a sex offender for the rest of his life. He’ll receive credit for approximately 27 months he has spent in confinement.

In addition, the Archdiocese of Cincinnati said it would seek to remove him from the clergy.

The plea came one day before jury selection was set to begin for his trial.

Prosecutors said the attacks took place in Drew’s office at St. Jude Church when he was serving as the music minister from 1988 to 1991.

The victim, who is now 41, was 10 and 11 years old at the time.

Speaking in court, the man told Drew that he will have to answer to God for what he did.

Drew declined to speak, but his lawyer said the defense expressed remorse.

The archdiocese announced it will seek the “laicization” of Drew.

“Father Geoff Drew will never again have a priestly assignment in the Archdiocese of Cincinnati or any other diocese,” Archbishop Dennis Schnurr said in a statement.