Court Digest

Air Force officer pleads guilty to transporting child porn

GREENBELT, Md. (AP) — A U.S. Air Force officer has pleaded guilty to moving videos of child pornography from Maryland to New York, a federal prosecutor said.

Erek L. Barron, U.S. Attorney for Maryland, said in a news release that 1st Lt. Jason Daniel Ort, 36, of Waldorf, Maryland, pleaded guilty on Wednesday to transportation of child pornography. According to his guilty plea, Ort knowingly transported videos containing child pornography between Sept. 28 and Oct. 1, 2020.

The plea agreement said the Onondaga County Sheriff’s Office in New York received a complaint that Ort had placed a camera in a bedroom while visiting a home there. Military records showed Ort, who was stationed in Maryland, was scheduled for leave during that time to visit the New York home.

After the camera was found, a review of the SD card showed a minor female using the bathroom, the news release said.

Ort admitted that he had placed the camera in the bedroom, and placed cameras elsewhere, including a bathroom in a home in Maryland, according to the news release.

If his plea is accepted, Ort faces 10 years to 15 years in federal prison at sentencing on May 4. 

 

Illinois Man surfed porn site before fatal crash: charges

CROWN POINT, Ind. (AP) — An Illinois man was surfing a pornographic website moments before his tractor-trailer collided with a tar tanker near Lowell, killing the road construction worker who was driving, prosecutors say.

Clark R. Johnson, 69, of Hoopeston, Illinois, was charged Monday with reckless homicide, two counts of criminal recklessness and three counts of misdemeanor distracted driving. He was ordered held on a $4,000 cash bond, the Post-Tribune reported.

The crash occurred at 8:40 a.m. on Aug. 25, 2020, on U.S. 41 in Lowell. Martin Knip, 63, of LaPorte and DeMotte, was killed. 

Johnson was treated for minor injuries at a hospital, charges state. 

A witness told police he was in a pickup truck behind Knip’s tanker a semitrailer came speeding down a construction zone in their lane. The semitrailer struck the pickup’s rear left corner and then the tanker, causing the tanker to roll over.

At the time, Knip was spraying hot tar on the road shoulder, charges state.

Johnson told hospital workers he was driving 55-65 mph (88-105 kilometers per hour) at the time of the crash. He suffered a forehead cut and a fractured finger, according to hospital records.

Police later found the porn website on Johnson’s cellphone, documents said.

 

Prison for man who tried to breach cockpit, jumped from jet

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A Mexican national was sentenced Wednesday to 18 months in federal prison for attempting to breach the cockpit of United Airlines plane and then jumped from the airliner taxiing at Los Angeles International Airport, federal prosecutors said. 

Luis Armando Victoria Dominguez assaulted a flight attendant then opened the exit door and fell onto the runway last June, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said in a statement. 

The 34-year-old from La Paz, Mexico pleaded guilty in October to one count of interference with flight crew members. The judge on Wednesday also ordered him to pay more than $20,000 in restitution.

Dominguez “sprinted” to the front of the plane, tried to get into the cockpit and then opened the door and jumped while another passenger unsuccessfully tried to restrain him, according to an FBI affidavit. 

“Once ... Dominguez landed on the tarmac, he began crawling away from the aircraft. His right leg appeared broken,” the affidavit states.

The flight was scheduled to fly from LA to Salt Lake City. 

 

Prosecutors slam trucker’s reduced prison sentence

DENVER (AP) — The reduction of a 110-year prison sentence to 10 years by Colorado’s governor for a trucker convicted of killing four people in a fiery interstate crash is hurting prosecutors’ efforts to negotiate sentences in other cases, according to two district attorneys.

The Dec. 30 commutation by Democratic Gov. Jared Polis for the trucker was “unprecedented, premature and unwarranted” because Rogel Aguilera-Mederos’ case was still active, with a judge scheduled to review a prosecutor’s request to reduce the sentence, said Boulder County District Attorney Michael Dougherty and Mesa County District Attorney Dan Rubinstein.

Dougherty is a Democrat and Rubinstein is a Republican and both told Polis in a Jan. 20 letter that his decision “is having a substantial ripple effect” on other cases, The Denver Post reported on Wednesday. The Post obtained the letter through an open records request. 

“Sentences should be influenced by the facts and circumstances, not by petitions, online surveys or tweets,” they said, referring to  a national campaign to lower Aguilera-Mederos’ sentence prior to Polis’ decision.

Dougherty and Rubinstein said that the decision affected prosecutors’ efforts to reach an eight-year sentence in a recent Boulder County sexual assault case, saying the defendant’s attorney objected that eight years was excessive in light of Aguilera-Mederos’ 10-year term.

Dougherty told The Post that he and Rubinstein met with Polis after they sent the letter and that the prosecutors “are optimistic that our concerns were understood and that what happened in that case was an exception.”

Polis spokesman Conor Cahill said the governor reduced the trucker’s sentence because “there was clearly an urgency to remedy this sentence and restore confidence in the uniformity and fairness of our criminal justice system.”

Polis’ move came days after a judge scheduled a January hearing to reconsider the sentence at the request of the local district attorney, Alexis King, who had planned to ask that it be reduced to 20 to 30 years. 

About 5 million people signed an online petition seeking clemency for Aguilera-Mederos, who was convicted of vehicular homicide and other charges in the explosive 2019 pileup.

Aguilera-Mederos testified that he was hauling lumber when the brakes on his semitrailer failed as he was descending a steep grade of Interstate 70 in the Rocky Mountain foothills. 

His truck plowed into vehicles that had slowed because of another wreck, setting off a chain-reaction crash and a fireball that consumed vehicles and melted parts of the highway.

Judge Bruce Jones imposed the 110-year sentence on Dec. 13 after finding it was the mandatory minimum term set forth under state law, noting it would not have been his choice. 

 

New Mexico Man gets 10 years in prison for 11th and 12th DWI convictions

A 44-year-old Gallup man has been sentenced to 10 years in prison after pleading guilty to DWI and other charges in two cases that resulted in his 11th and 12th DWI convictions.

Under a plea agreement with prosecutors, Maynard Miller pleaded guilty to DWI in each of the two latest cases and to one count each of driving while revoked (DWI related) and possession of a firearm by a felon.

As part of the pleas, Miller on Monday admitted in state District Court to having 10 prior DWI convictions in McKinley County dating back 24 years, the Gallup Independent  reported.

Judge Robert Aragon said he felt both sympathy for Miller and relief that Miller would be off the street. “You’re lucky to be alive” Aragon told Miller. “Please try to deal with your disease.”

Due to his intoxication, Miller said he could not remember what happened during his two most recent drunken driving instances, both of which involved one-vehicle crashes, but he acknowledged that a jury could have found him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt based on the evidence in both cases.

 

Ex-assistant principal to prison for child porn

YERINGTON, Nev. (AP) — A former assistant principal at a middle school in rural Lyon County has been sentenced to one to five years in prison on child pornography charges.

Scott Darrington, 55, of Fallon, was arrested after investigators received a tip in June 2020 that he had uploaded an image of child pornography to a website chatroom, prosecutors say.

A subsequent search of his phone and computer uncovered additional images of child pornography, Lyon County District Attorney Stephen Rye said Tuesday.

Darrington pleaded guilty last summer to possession of visual presentation depicting sexual conduct of a person under age 16.

Prosecutors argued a prison sentence was appropriate because of Darrington’s involvement in the education system, Rye said. At the time, he was the assistant principal at Yerington Intermediate School.

A Third District judge sentenced him on Dec. 6 but the judgment of conviction wasn’t filed until last week, Rye said.

 

California College to pay $560K to ex-athletic director in abuse case

SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) — San Jose State University has agreed to pay $560,000 to a former deputy athletic director who was fired in retaliation for alerting school officials about student athletes’ complaints of sexual abuse by the then-director of sports medicine, his attorneys said Wednesday. 

Steve O’Brien was fired on March 3, 2020, after he took the side of the students and Sage Hopkins, the university’s women’s swimming and diving coach, who repeatedly alerted school officials about the abuse complaints against Scott Shaw, San Jose State’s former director of sports medicine. 

Shaw resigned in 2020 after allegations resurfaced in news reports accusing him of inappropriately touching swimmers during physical therapy from 2006 to 2009, when the university investigated and cleared Shaw of all wrongdoing. He has denied misconduct, and no criminal charges have been filed against him. 

University President Mary Papazian and Athletic Director Marie Tuite resigned last year after it came to light that a new investigation of Shaw wasn’t ordered until late 2019 even though complaints had been reported for years.

As part of the ongoing federal investigation, the university is required to seek out more than 1,000 student-athletes who may have been treated by Shaw.

The federal investigation also found the university had retaliated against O’Brien and Hopkins. Two weeks ago, the university agreed to pay Hopkins $225,000 and promote him to management.

“It’s a reminder of the all-too-common issue of student-athletes being mistreated and the processes that result in the retaliation against those who would stand up on their behalf,” O’Brien told the Mercury News on Wednesday, “and why people don’t come forward sooner and why this kind of abuse can go on for so long.”

Federal investigators identified 23 student-athletes who they said were inappropriately touched by Shaw. Of those, only 13 have accepted $125,000 each in the settlement that was announced on Sept. 21.

Female swimmers said Shaw subjected them to repeated, unwelcome sexual touching during treatment in the campus training facilities, federal prosecutors said.