New York
Remains of murdered woman identified after over 30 years using DNA testing
NEW YORK (AP) — New York authorities have identified the body of a woman found more than 30 years ago near the intersection of two parkways in Queens by using advanced DNA technology.
Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz said her office’s cold case unit, the New York Police Department and the Office of Chief Medical Examiner identified the woman as 30-year-old Judy Rodriguez. The mother of three was last seen by her family on January 23, 1991 and had been reported missing at the time.
Her disappearance coincided with the first birthday of one of Rodriguez’s children, who were raised by their grandparents.
“Three decades ago, four men were convicted for a gruesome killing of an unidentified woman,” Katz said in a statement released Monday. “Though justice was served, the family went 33 long years without any answers about their loved one.”
DNA Labs International, a private lab, produced the genealogical profile from the skeletal remains in April before it was uploaded into public databases. The results were given to a detective in NYPD’s Investigative Genealogy Squad, which built a family tree. Investigators then contacted potential family members who submitted DNA samples to compare with the remains.
The four men, two of whom were 20 and two others who were 18 and 19 at the time of the killing, were prosecuted and convicted in 1992 and 1993 for their roles in the killing even though the victim’s identity was unknown.
Arizona
Appeals court: State official who delayed county’s 2022 election certification didn’t have immunity
PHOENIX (AP) — An appeals court has rejected an Arizona official’s argument that felony charges against him for delaying certification of his rural county’s 2022 election results should be dismissed because he has legislative immunity.
In an order Tuesday, the Arizona Court of Appeals concluded Cochise County Supervisor Tom Crosby’s duty to certify the election results wasn’t discretionary. The court also said certifying election results is an administrative responsibility and that legislative immunity doesn’t apply to Crosby’s situation.
Crosby and Cochise County Supervisor Peggy Judd, both Republicans, were criminally charged after they balked at certifying the results. Two months ago, Judd pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of failing to perform her duty as an election officer and was sentenced to probation.
Crosby has pleaded not guilty to charges of conspiracy and interference with an election officer. His trial is scheduled for Jan. 30.
Dennis Wilenchik, one of Crosby’s lawyers, said his client will ask the state Supreme Court to review the matter. Wilenchik said moving the certification’s date by a few days wasn’t a criminal act and that Crosby should be immunized.
“If it’s just a rubber stamp then why is it (certification) needed at all?” Wilenchik said.
The Cochise County results were ultimately certified past the deadline after a judge ordered Judd and Crosby to carry out their legal duties. Judd and Supervisor Ann English, the board’s lone Democrat, finally approved the canvass, allowing the statewide certification to go forward as scheduled.
North Carolina
Court directs new trial a second time in case focused on self-defense argument
RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — A North Carolina appeals court has said for a second time that a woman convicted of killing her lover should receive a new trial, declaring that text messages and photos from her cellphone wrongly presented to the jury likely prevented her acquittal on self-defense grounds.
A divided three-judge panel of the intermediate-level Court of Appeals ruled Tuesday that the judge in the 2019 trial of Wendy Dawn Lamb Hicks erred by allowing that evidence from local prosecutors and without instructions to jurors limiting how it should be considered. The jury convicted Hicks of second-degree murder in the 2017 death of Caleb Adams, who was shot twice in the back in Hicks’ bedroom doorway in her Randolph County home. Hicks was sentenced to 15 to 19 years in prison.
The texts and photos, which were printed out for jurors, unfairly prejudiced Hicks by emphasizing evidence such as her sex life, rather than whether she was justified in firing at Adams, Court of Appeals Judge April Wood wrote while also vacating her conviction.
“We conclude there was substantial and persuasive evidence presented at trial demonstrating Defendant acted in self-defense,” Wood said in the majority opinion. “The jurors probably would have acquitted Defendant if the exhibits did not cause them to reach their decision based on passion, namely, a personal revulsion toward Defendant.”
In 2022, Wood wrote the unanimous opinion for another three-judge appeals panel that directed Hicks receive a new trial. Wood wrote that Superior Court Judge Bradford Long had erred by giving unsupported jury instructions about the legal limits for deadly force inside a home.
The state’s Supreme Court reversed that decision and upheld the conviction in September 2023. The primary opinion from the court said that based on evidence, it was proper for the judge to instruct that Hicks could not cite self-defense and the protection of one’s home to justify deadly force if the jury could infer that she was acting as the aggressor — even if she did not instigate the confrontation. But justices told the Court of Appeals it still needed to decide whether Long committed a serious error by admitting the records and photos into evidence.
Writing Tuesday, Wood said that testimony by Hicks and others already demonstrated “numerous sordid details” about her life, including simultaneous affairs and continuing one with Adams after learning he was married, according to Wood’s written opinion. Adams and Hicks’ relationship also was marked by drug use.
Admitting the text message exchanges, which included references to sex acts and violence, probably shifted the focus of the case “to whether she was someone of whom the jurors should approve personally,” Wood wrote. And enlarged, close-up images of Hicks engaging in sexual activity with Adams likely “only served the purpose of shocking and disgusting the jury.”
Court of Appeals Judge Julee Flood joined in Wood’s opinion on Tuesday. Court of Appeals Judge Hunter Murphy, who was also on the 2022 panel, now decided that the murder conviction should be left intact. In a dissenting opinion, Murphy said he couldn’t conclude that the jury “almost certainly” would have reached a different verdict had the evidence been excluded.
The state Supreme Court can choose to hear the case again based on Tuesday’s ruling.
It was among dozens issued on a special filing day and designed for some members of the 15-judge court who won’t return to their seats in 2025. Murphy and Judge Carolyn Thompson both lost in 2024 elections. Some opinions also came from Judge Jefferson Griffin, who remains in a tight race for a state Supreme Court seat with Associate Justice Allison Riggs.
New York
NYC jail staff blocked medics from treating 23-year-old woman who later died
NEW YORK (AP) — City correction officers repeatedly blocked medical staff from administering care to a severely ill woman held at Rikers Island weeks before the 23-year-old fell into a coma and died of apparent organ failure, a jail oversight board found.
Charizma Jones was receiving treatment for a possible case of scarlet fever when she was transferred to an infirmary unit May 4 for worsening symptoms.
But when medical personnel attempted to check her vital signs, they were stopped from entering her cell on six separate occasions by correction officers who cited an unspecified “security reason,” according to a report released Monday by the Board of Corrections, an independent oversight agency.
After two days of isolation, Jones was rushed to a hospital with a rash, high fever and signs of acute liver damage. On July 14 she was pronounced dead of “multiorgan failure,” according to a preliminary examination.
Jones’ death has sparked outrage among advocates and some officials, as well as ongoing probes by the state Attorney General’s Office and the city’s Department of Investigation.
An attorney for her family, MK Kaishian, called the officers’ actions “illegal and morally repugnant” and accused them of contributing to a death that was both “preventable and agonizing.”
The findings come weeks after a federal judge ordered the city to begin preparing for a possible federal takeover of the jail system, one of the country’s largest and most notorious, ruling it had placed its incarcerated population in “unconstitutional danger.”
The investigation into Jones’ death details several of the chronic issues at the heart of the federal court case, including allegations of staff neglect and inadequate medical treatment.
A resident of the Bronx who suffered from mental health and substance problems, Jones arrived at Rikers Island in September 2023 to serve a sentence for assault. After allegedly fighting with a correction officer in April, she was placed on restricted status and deemed ineligible for early release.
According to surveillance video viewed by the oversight agency, she appeared woozy and unable to stand while in a general population unit May 4. But after an officer called the health clinic to report the medical emergency, they were told “there was no staff to respond,” the report says.
Instead fellow detainees tried to help Jones, rubbing ice on her skin to cool her off and holding her head as she appeared to lose consciousness.
“They became frustrated with the lack of response by clinical staff, so they became disruptive and refused to comply with staff orders,” the report says. Eventually they triggered an emergency alarm that brought Jones medical attention.
After being transferred to the infirmary, she was prescribed antibiotics for a possible case of scarlet fever and isolated in a cell. But even as she was vomiting into a toilet, video shows, officers repeatedly refused to allow medical workers access to her cell, at one point stating she was on “Medlock,” the investigation found.
A spokesperson for the Department of Correction, Shayla Mulzac-Warner, declined to answer specific questions about the response, citing the ongoing investigations, but said, “The health and safety of every person in our care is always our foremost concern.”
According to the report, the agency has not produced records related to the refusal to grant medical access. An attorney for Jones’ family said they were not aware of any staffers being disciplined.
“While it is imperative that individual officers are held accountable, it is equally if not more urgent to acknowledge and address the fact that Ms. Jones’ death was caused by systemic rot and indifference to life within New York City’s jails originating at the highest levels of City leadership,” the attorney said in a statement.
Under a plan approved by the city council in 2019, New York is legally required to shutter Rikers Island and replace it with four smaller and more modern jails by 2027.
But Mayor Eric Adams, a Democrat, has resisted the closure and urged lawmakers to come up with a “Plan B.”
The city’s budget director acknowledged this year that officials would likely not meet the mandated deadline.
Remains of murdered woman identified after over 30 years using DNA testing
NEW YORK (AP) — New York authorities have identified the body of a woman found more than 30 years ago near the intersection of two parkways in Queens by using advanced DNA technology.
Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz said her office’s cold case unit, the New York Police Department and the Office of Chief Medical Examiner identified the woman as 30-year-old Judy Rodriguez. The mother of three was last seen by her family on January 23, 1991 and had been reported missing at the time.
Her disappearance coincided with the first birthday of one of Rodriguez’s children, who were raised by their grandparents.
“Three decades ago, four men were convicted for a gruesome killing of an unidentified woman,” Katz said in a statement released Monday. “Though justice was served, the family went 33 long years without any answers about their loved one.”
DNA Labs International, a private lab, produced the genealogical profile from the skeletal remains in April before it was uploaded into public databases. The results were given to a detective in NYPD’s Investigative Genealogy Squad, which built a family tree. Investigators then contacted potential family members who submitted DNA samples to compare with the remains.
The four men, two of whom were 20 and two others who were 18 and 19 at the time of the killing, were prosecuted and convicted in 1992 and 1993 for their roles in the killing even though the victim’s identity was unknown.
Arizona
Appeals court: State official who delayed county’s 2022 election certification didn’t have immunity
PHOENIX (AP) — An appeals court has rejected an Arizona official’s argument that felony charges against him for delaying certification of his rural county’s 2022 election results should be dismissed because he has legislative immunity.
In an order Tuesday, the Arizona Court of Appeals concluded Cochise County Supervisor Tom Crosby’s duty to certify the election results wasn’t discretionary. The court also said certifying election results is an administrative responsibility and that legislative immunity doesn’t apply to Crosby’s situation.
Crosby and Cochise County Supervisor Peggy Judd, both Republicans, were criminally charged after they balked at certifying the results. Two months ago, Judd pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of failing to perform her duty as an election officer and was sentenced to probation.
Crosby has pleaded not guilty to charges of conspiracy and interference with an election officer. His trial is scheduled for Jan. 30.
Dennis Wilenchik, one of Crosby’s lawyers, said his client will ask the state Supreme Court to review the matter. Wilenchik said moving the certification’s date by a few days wasn’t a criminal act and that Crosby should be immunized.
“If it’s just a rubber stamp then why is it (certification) needed at all?” Wilenchik said.
The Cochise County results were ultimately certified past the deadline after a judge ordered Judd and Crosby to carry out their legal duties. Judd and Supervisor Ann English, the board’s lone Democrat, finally approved the canvass, allowing the statewide certification to go forward as scheduled.
North Carolina
Court directs new trial a second time in case focused on self-defense argument
RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — A North Carolina appeals court has said for a second time that a woman convicted of killing her lover should receive a new trial, declaring that text messages and photos from her cellphone wrongly presented to the jury likely prevented her acquittal on self-defense grounds.
A divided three-judge panel of the intermediate-level Court of Appeals ruled Tuesday that the judge in the 2019 trial of Wendy Dawn Lamb Hicks erred by allowing that evidence from local prosecutors and without instructions to jurors limiting how it should be considered. The jury convicted Hicks of second-degree murder in the 2017 death of Caleb Adams, who was shot twice in the back in Hicks’ bedroom doorway in her Randolph County home. Hicks was sentenced to 15 to 19 years in prison.
The texts and photos, which were printed out for jurors, unfairly prejudiced Hicks by emphasizing evidence such as her sex life, rather than whether she was justified in firing at Adams, Court of Appeals Judge April Wood wrote while also vacating her conviction.
“We conclude there was substantial and persuasive evidence presented at trial demonstrating Defendant acted in self-defense,” Wood said in the majority opinion. “The jurors probably would have acquitted Defendant if the exhibits did not cause them to reach their decision based on passion, namely, a personal revulsion toward Defendant.”
In 2022, Wood wrote the unanimous opinion for another three-judge appeals panel that directed Hicks receive a new trial. Wood wrote that Superior Court Judge Bradford Long had erred by giving unsupported jury instructions about the legal limits for deadly force inside a home.
The state’s Supreme Court reversed that decision and upheld the conviction in September 2023. The primary opinion from the court said that based on evidence, it was proper for the judge to instruct that Hicks could not cite self-defense and the protection of one’s home to justify deadly force if the jury could infer that she was acting as the aggressor — even if she did not instigate the confrontation. But justices told the Court of Appeals it still needed to decide whether Long committed a serious error by admitting the records and photos into evidence.
Writing Tuesday, Wood said that testimony by Hicks and others already demonstrated “numerous sordid details” about her life, including simultaneous affairs and continuing one with Adams after learning he was married, according to Wood’s written opinion. Adams and Hicks’ relationship also was marked by drug use.
Admitting the text message exchanges, which included references to sex acts and violence, probably shifted the focus of the case “to whether she was someone of whom the jurors should approve personally,” Wood wrote. And enlarged, close-up images of Hicks engaging in sexual activity with Adams likely “only served the purpose of shocking and disgusting the jury.”
Court of Appeals Judge Julee Flood joined in Wood’s opinion on Tuesday. Court of Appeals Judge Hunter Murphy, who was also on the 2022 panel, now decided that the murder conviction should be left intact. In a dissenting opinion, Murphy said he couldn’t conclude that the jury “almost certainly” would have reached a different verdict had the evidence been excluded.
The state Supreme Court can choose to hear the case again based on Tuesday’s ruling.
It was among dozens issued on a special filing day and designed for some members of the 15-judge court who won’t return to their seats in 2025. Murphy and Judge Carolyn Thompson both lost in 2024 elections. Some opinions also came from Judge Jefferson Griffin, who remains in a tight race for a state Supreme Court seat with Associate Justice Allison Riggs.
New York
NYC jail staff blocked medics from treating 23-year-old woman who later died
NEW YORK (AP) — City correction officers repeatedly blocked medical staff from administering care to a severely ill woman held at Rikers Island weeks before the 23-year-old fell into a coma and died of apparent organ failure, a jail oversight board found.
Charizma Jones was receiving treatment for a possible case of scarlet fever when she was transferred to an infirmary unit May 4 for worsening symptoms.
But when medical personnel attempted to check her vital signs, they were stopped from entering her cell on six separate occasions by correction officers who cited an unspecified “security reason,” according to a report released Monday by the Board of Corrections, an independent oversight agency.
After two days of isolation, Jones was rushed to a hospital with a rash, high fever and signs of acute liver damage. On July 14 she was pronounced dead of “multiorgan failure,” according to a preliminary examination.
Jones’ death has sparked outrage among advocates and some officials, as well as ongoing probes by the state Attorney General’s Office and the city’s Department of Investigation.
An attorney for her family, MK Kaishian, called the officers’ actions “illegal and morally repugnant” and accused them of contributing to a death that was both “preventable and agonizing.”
The findings come weeks after a federal judge ordered the city to begin preparing for a possible federal takeover of the jail system, one of the country’s largest and most notorious, ruling it had placed its incarcerated population in “unconstitutional danger.”
The investigation into Jones’ death details several of the chronic issues at the heart of the federal court case, including allegations of staff neglect and inadequate medical treatment.
A resident of the Bronx who suffered from mental health and substance problems, Jones arrived at Rikers Island in September 2023 to serve a sentence for assault. After allegedly fighting with a correction officer in April, she was placed on restricted status and deemed ineligible for early release.
According to surveillance video viewed by the oversight agency, she appeared woozy and unable to stand while in a general population unit May 4. But after an officer called the health clinic to report the medical emergency, they were told “there was no staff to respond,” the report says.
Instead fellow detainees tried to help Jones, rubbing ice on her skin to cool her off and holding her head as she appeared to lose consciousness.
“They became frustrated with the lack of response by clinical staff, so they became disruptive and refused to comply with staff orders,” the report says. Eventually they triggered an emergency alarm that brought Jones medical attention.
After being transferred to the infirmary, she was prescribed antibiotics for a possible case of scarlet fever and isolated in a cell. But even as she was vomiting into a toilet, video shows, officers repeatedly refused to allow medical workers access to her cell, at one point stating she was on “Medlock,” the investigation found.
A spokesperson for the Department of Correction, Shayla Mulzac-Warner, declined to answer specific questions about the response, citing the ongoing investigations, but said, “The health and safety of every person in our care is always our foremost concern.”
According to the report, the agency has not produced records related to the refusal to grant medical access. An attorney for Jones’ family said they were not aware of any staffers being disciplined.
“While it is imperative that individual officers are held accountable, it is equally if not more urgent to acknowledge and address the fact that Ms. Jones’ death was caused by systemic rot and indifference to life within New York City’s jails originating at the highest levels of City leadership,” the attorney said in a statement.
Under a plan approved by the city council in 2019, New York is legally required to shutter Rikers Island and replace it with four smaller and more modern jails by 2027.
But Mayor Eric Adams, a Democrat, has resisted the closure and urged lawmakers to come up with a “Plan B.”
The city’s budget director acknowledged this year that officials would likely not meet the mandated deadline.
