National Roundup

Iowa
Man gets 25 years for beating to death his father
IOWA CITY, Iowa (AP) — An Iowa City man has been given 25 years in prison for beating to death his father.

Johnson County District Court records say 31-year-old Flannery Kennedy-Meier was sentenced Tuesday after pleading guilty to attempted murder. Prosecutors had reduced the charge from first-degree murder in exchange for Kennedy-Meier’s plea.

Kennedy-Meier was arrested Nov. 13, 2017, after police were called to an Iowa City residence and found the injured Meier. Officers say Kennedy-Meier had hit his father in the head with a weapon, causing a skull fracture and brain bleeding.

Meier died of his injuries on Dec. 4, 2017, and an autopsy blamed the November beating.

Wisconsin
Supreme Court says county can order town to rename roads
MADISON, Wis. (AP) — The Wisconsin Supreme Court says county officials can order a town to rename more than a quarter of its roads.

A 1957 state law allows counties to establish a rural naming or number system in towns to help emergency responders find locations. Marathon County officials decided in 2016 to establish such a system and notified the Town of Rib Mountain that it would have to rename 61 of its 202 roads.

The town sued, arguing the county’s authority to enact such a system extends only to rural areas.

The Supreme Court ruled 5-0 on Thursday that the law allows counties to establish such systems in towns and the term “rural” merely describes the system and doesn’t limit counties’ authority.

Rib Mountain’s attorney, Dean Dietrich, didn’t immediately return a voicemail.

Connecticut
Man gets 10 years for home invasion, fake virus threat
HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — One of three men authorities say took part in a 2007 home invasion at the Connecticut estate of a New York socialite during which the victims were injected with what they were told was a lethal virus has been sentenced to more than 10 years in prison.

Federal prosecutors say 41-year-old Alexandru Lucian Nicolescu, a native of Romania, was sentenced Wednesday in connection with the home invasion at the Kent estate of Anne Bass.

Prosecutors say Bass and her long-time partner were bound and blindfolded, then injected with a liquid the suspects claimed was a deadly virus. They demanded $8.5 million for a reversal drug, but eventually fled when it became apparent the victims couldn’t get the money.

The first suspect was convicted in 2016. The third remains at large.

Illinois
Judge: Use of GPS data in ­robbery case unconstitutional
CHICAGO (AP) — A federal judge has ruled that suburban Chicago police violated constitutional protections against unreasonable searches by accessing weeks of GPS data indicating a suspect’s car had been outside a jewelry store when it was robbed.

The Chicago Daily Law Bulletin reported Wednesday that U.S. District Judge Gary Feinerman granted a motion by defendant Tobias Diggs to bar the location data compiled by Hinsdale police from his upcoming trial.

Prosecutors had cited a Supreme Court ruling that people don’t have a legitimate expectation of privacy when they voluntarily provide data to a third party. But Feinerman said that doesn’t apply to weeks of minute-by-minute location information kept by wireless carriers.

Diggs’ lawyer, Douglas E. Whitney, said he was grateful for what he called Feinerman’s “meticulous legal analysis.”

Prosecutors declined comment.

Oregon
State to appeal federal judge order in murder case
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — The Oregon Department of Justice will appeal a federal judge’s ruling that ordered the release or a new trial for Frank Gable, convicted of murder for the 1989 stabbing death of Oregon’s prison chief Michael Francke.

The Oregonian/OregonLive reports the state filed its notice of appeal Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Portland.

The state also filed a 44-page motion to put on hold U.S. Magistrate Judge John V. Acosta’s order while the appeal is pending.

The state is interested “in continuing custody and rehabilitation” of Gable, fears that he’ll flee if he’s released as he has a life sentence hanging over him, and doesn’t want to waste time or money preparing for a new trial, if an appellate court overturns Acosta’s order, according to the state’s motion.

“Nothing suggests that, in the many years since his convictions, petitioner has developed ties to any community in Oregon that would act as an incentive for him to remain to await a possible retrial,” the state Justice Department lawyers wrote. They also believe he remains a danger to the community.

Oregon’s Federal Public Defen­der’s Office, which represented Gable, is expected to seek Gable’s release pending the state’s appeal.

Gable, 59, is serving a life sentence without parole, now in a Kansas prison.

The state’s effort to overturn the judge’s ruling will go before the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Last month, Acosta gave the state 90 days to retry or release Gable.

Marion County District Attorney Paige Clarkson this week said her office is still weighing whether it will retry Gable. Legal observers have said a new trial is unlikely because of the passage of time and Acosta’s decision.

Francke was 42 and the director of the Oregon Department of Corrections when he was attacked near his state-issued Pontiac outside the Dome Building, the agency’s headquarters in Salem, on Jan. 17, 1989.

He was found dead by a security guard on a covered porch of the building. Marion County prosecutors argued at trial that Francke had come upon Gable as Gable was breaking into the prison director’s car. They said Gable, a small-time methamphetamine dealer and ex-con, stabbed Francke three times and then fled. Francke staggered to the porch and died.

In his ruling last month, Acosta found that the state judge in the Gable case was wrong to exclude another man’s confession to the crime from the trial and that Gable’s defense lawyers at the time should have asserted Gable’s federal due process rights in light of that error.

Francke’s brothers, Patrick and Kevin Francke, publicly urged the state not to appeal. The two have long believed Gable was innocent of the crime.

The Oregon Innocence Project said on Twitter on Wednesday that at least seven prosecution witnesses implicated Gable after prolonged questioning by police and use of false evidence and threats, and that all later recanted.