New York
Judge allows advanced DNA evidence in Gilgo Beach serial killing trial
RIVERHEAD, N.Y. (AP) — A New York judge on Wednesday allowed DNA evidence obtained through advanced techniques into the forthcoming murder trial of the man accused of being Long Island’s Gilgo Beach serial killer.
New York State Supreme Court Justice Timothy Mazzei made the decision Wednesday but didn’t explain the ruling at a brief hearing in Riverhead court in the case against Rex Heuermann.
He set another court date of Sept. 23, noting the defense has notified the court that it intends to file another motion in the case, before adjourning.
Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney said simply “we won.” He was expected to address reporters later.
The 61-year-old Manhattan architect has been charged in the deaths of seven women in a series of killings that prosecutors say stretched back at least to 1993.
Most of the women were sex workers whose remains were discovered along an isolated parkway not far from Gilgo Beach and Heuermann’s home in Massapequa.
Experts say the decision marks the first time such techniques are allowed as evidence in a New York court — and one of just a handful of such instances nationwide.
Mazzei’s decision pertained to DNA analysis generated by Astrea Forensics, a California lab known for using new techniques to analyze old, highly degraded DNA samples.
Prosecutors say Astrea’s whole genome sequencing analysis, combined with other evidence, overwhelmingly implicates Heuermann as the killer in the brutal deaths that have haunted the New York City suburb for years.
But Heuermann’s lawyers argued the lab’s calculations exaggerate the likelihood that the hairs recovered from the burial sites match their client’s DNA.
They complained the statistical analysis Astrea conducted was improperly based on the 1,000 Genomes Project, an open-source database containing the full DNA sequence of some 2,500 people worldwide.
Prosecutors dismissed the critique as “misguided” and a “fundamental misunderstanding” of the lab’s methods.
They also noted that a separate DNA analysis, completed by another crime lab using traditional methods long accepted in New York courts, also convincingly link hairs found on some victims to either Heuermann or members of his family.
Heuermann was arrested more than two years ago but has yet to be given a trial date as he remains in custody in Riverhead.
Whole genome sequencing allows scientists to map out the entire genetic sequence, or genome, of a person using the slimmest of DNA material.
While it is relatively rare in criminal forensics, the technique has been used in a wide range of scientific and medical breakthroughs for years, including the mapping of the Neanderthal genome that earned a Nobel Prize in 2022.
Prosecutors and experts say whole genome sequencing has the potential to allow researchers to generate a DNA profile of a suspect in instances where long accepted DNA techniques fall short, such as when a sample is very old or highly degraded, as is the case with the hair fragments found on the Gilgo Beach victims.
California
LA school district settles with parents who sued over distance learning
Parents have agreed to settle a lawsuit that alleged the distance learning program used by the Los Angeles Unified School District during the COVID-19 pandemic failed to meet state educational standards and disproportionately harmed Black and Latino students, a lawyer for the families said.
Attorneys for parents who filed the class-action lawsuit in 2020 said the agreement would require the nation’s second-largest school district to offer at least 45 hours of significant tutoring services a year to more than 100,000 of its most vulnerable students over the next three years in addition to teacher training and mandatory assessments. The goal is to help the district’s most disadvantaged students, the lawyers said.
The deal must be approved by the court to take effect.
“For nearly five years, we have fought tirelessly on behalf of LAUSD students and their families to enforce students’ constitutional right to basic educational equality,” Edward Hillenbrand, one of the plaintiffs’ pro bono attorneys, said in a statement on Wednesday.
A message seeking comment was sent to Los Angeles Unified.
The agreement ends a five-year court battle over Los Angeles Unified’s distance learning programs during school shutdowns. The case was dismissed in 2021 once schools were reopened but the parents, who have been supported by educational non-profits Parent Revolution and Innovate Public Schools, appealed. A state appeals court reinstated the case two years later.
The parents argued that the district failed to engage their children online at the same rate as other large California school districts and that state-mandated instructional minutes often lacked actual instruction. They said teachers would sometimes dismiss kids after checking they turned in their work and without going over new material, and complained it was not always possible to connect to the district’s platform.
In turn, they said their students began lagging behind grade-level standards and grew disinterested in school. The challenges disproportionately affected Black and Latino children, they said, who had lower weekly participation rates online than other students soon after the shutdowns began.
California schools had a range of pandemic learning models including some that offered hybrid schedules where students toggled between distance and smaller class settings and others that were solely online. Many districts were not allowed to fully reopen schools due to infection rates under the state’s rules.
Today, Los Angeles Unified has 400,000 students through 12th grade, and more than three-quarters are economically disadvantaged, according to district data.
Plaintiff Maritza Gonzalez said in the statement that the support is too late for her son, who is now in college, but she is thankful her daughter, who is starting high school, will have access to tutoring.
Wisconsin
December trial set for judge accused of helping man to evade arrest in courtroom
MADISON, Wis. (AP) — A Wisconsin judge accused of helping a man evade arrest in her courtroom by U.S. immigration agents will stand trial in December after she decided against appealing a federal judge’s ruling rejecting her attempt to dismiss the case.
Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Hannah Dugan’s attorneys said in federal court on Wednesday that she would not appeal the ruling at this time, but could later. U.S. District Judge Lynn Adelman then scheduled her trial to begin Dec. 15. It is expected to last about a week. Jury selection is set for Dec. 11 and Dec. 12.
Dugan’s case has highlighted the push by President Donald Trump’s administration to confront state and local authorities who resist his sweeping immigration crackdown.
Democrats have accused the administration of trying to make a national example of Dugan to chill judicial opposition to its deportation efforts.
She was arrested at the county courthouse in April and indicted on federal charges in May. Dugan argued that the charges should be dismissed, saying that she was acting in her official capacity as a judge and is therefore immune from prosecution.
Adelman last week rejected that argument and upheld the July recommendation of a magistrate judge who also ruled that the case could proceed.
Dugan is charged with concealing an individual to prevent arrest, a misdemeanor, and obstruction, which is a felony. She has pleaded not guilty and faces up to six years in prison and a $350,000 fine if convicted on both counts.
Prosecutors say Dugan escorted Eduardo Flores-Ruiz, 31, and his lawyer out of her courtroom through a back door on April 18 after learning that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents were in the courthouse seeking to arrest him for being in the country without permanent legal status.
Agents arrested Flores-Ruiz outside the courthouse after a brief foot chase.
Dugan, 66, was suspended with pay by the Wisconsin Supreme Court after she was indicted.
California
‘Ketamine Queen’ pleads guilty to selling fatal dose to Matthew Perry
LOS ANGELES (AP) — A woman branded as the “Ketamine Queen” pleaded guilty Wednesday to selling Matthew Perry the drug that killed the “Friends” star.
Jasveen Sangha pleaded guilty to five federal charges, including providing the ketamine that led to Perry’s death. Her trial had been planned to start later this month. She is the fifth and final defendant charged in Perry’s overdose death to admit guilt.
Perry’s mother, Suzanne Perry, and his stepfather, “Dateline” reporter Keith Morrison, sat in the audience.
Prosecutors had cast Sangha, a 42-year-old citizen of the U.S. and the U.K., as a prolific drug dealer who was known to her customers as the “Ketamine Queen,” using the term often in press releases and court documents.
Making good on a deal she signed on Aug. 18, Sangha pleaded guilty to one count of maintaining a drug-involved premises, three counts of distribution of ketamine, and one count of distribution of ketamine resulting in death.
Prosecutors agreed to drop three other counts related to the distribution of ketamine, and one count of distribution of methamphetamine that was unrelated to the Perry case.
The final plea deal came a year after federal prosecutors announced that five people had been charged in Perry’s Oct. 28, 2023 death after a sweeping investigation.
Sangha is scheduled to be sentenced on Dec. 10. She could get up to 65 years in prison. The judge is not bound to follow any terms of the plea agreement, but prosecutors said in the document that they will ask for less than the maximum. None of the co-defendants have been sentenced yet.
Sangha and Dr. Salvador Plasencia, who pleaded guilty in July, had been the primary targets of the investigation. Three other defendants — Dr. Mark Chavez, Kenneth Iwamasa and Erik Fleming — pleaded guilty in exchange for their cooperation, which included statements implicating Sangha and Plasencia.
Perry was found dead in his Los Angeles home by Iwamasa, his assistant. The medical examiner ruled that ketamine, typically used as a surgical anesthetic, was the primary cause of death.
Sangha presented a posh lifestyle on Instagram, with photos of herself with the rich and famous in cities around the globe. Prosecutors said she privately presented herself as a dealer who sold to the same kind of high-class customers.
Perry had been using ketamine through his regular doctor as a legal, but off-label, treatment for depression, which has become increasingly common. Perry, 54, sought more ketamine than his doctor would give him, and his search for more led him to Sangha through his friend Fleming about two weeks before his death, prosecutors said.
Fleming messaged Perry’s assistant saying her ketamine was “amazing” and that she deals only “with high end and celebs.”
Perry bought large amounts of ketamine from Sangha, including 25 vials for $6,000 in cash four days before his death, prosecutors said.
On the day of Perry’s death, Sangha told Fleming they should delete all the messages they had sent each other, according to her indictment.
Sangha has been in federal custody for about a year.
Perry struggled with addiction for many years, dating back to his time on “Friends.”
Judge allows advanced DNA evidence in Gilgo Beach serial killing trial
RIVERHEAD, N.Y. (AP) — A New York judge on Wednesday allowed DNA evidence obtained through advanced techniques into the forthcoming murder trial of the man accused of being Long Island’s Gilgo Beach serial killer.
New York State Supreme Court Justice Timothy Mazzei made the decision Wednesday but didn’t explain the ruling at a brief hearing in Riverhead court in the case against Rex Heuermann.
He set another court date of Sept. 23, noting the defense has notified the court that it intends to file another motion in the case, before adjourning.
Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney said simply “we won.” He was expected to address reporters later.
The 61-year-old Manhattan architect has been charged in the deaths of seven women in a series of killings that prosecutors say stretched back at least to 1993.
Most of the women were sex workers whose remains were discovered along an isolated parkway not far from Gilgo Beach and Heuermann’s home in Massapequa.
Experts say the decision marks the first time such techniques are allowed as evidence in a New York court — and one of just a handful of such instances nationwide.
Mazzei’s decision pertained to DNA analysis generated by Astrea Forensics, a California lab known for using new techniques to analyze old, highly degraded DNA samples.
Prosecutors say Astrea’s whole genome sequencing analysis, combined with other evidence, overwhelmingly implicates Heuermann as the killer in the brutal deaths that have haunted the New York City suburb for years.
But Heuermann’s lawyers argued the lab’s calculations exaggerate the likelihood that the hairs recovered from the burial sites match their client’s DNA.
They complained the statistical analysis Astrea conducted was improperly based on the 1,000 Genomes Project, an open-source database containing the full DNA sequence of some 2,500 people worldwide.
Prosecutors dismissed the critique as “misguided” and a “fundamental misunderstanding” of the lab’s methods.
They also noted that a separate DNA analysis, completed by another crime lab using traditional methods long accepted in New York courts, also convincingly link hairs found on some victims to either Heuermann or members of his family.
Heuermann was arrested more than two years ago but has yet to be given a trial date as he remains in custody in Riverhead.
Whole genome sequencing allows scientists to map out the entire genetic sequence, or genome, of a person using the slimmest of DNA material.
While it is relatively rare in criminal forensics, the technique has been used in a wide range of scientific and medical breakthroughs for years, including the mapping of the Neanderthal genome that earned a Nobel Prize in 2022.
Prosecutors and experts say whole genome sequencing has the potential to allow researchers to generate a DNA profile of a suspect in instances where long accepted DNA techniques fall short, such as when a sample is very old or highly degraded, as is the case with the hair fragments found on the Gilgo Beach victims.
California
LA school district settles with parents who sued over distance learning
Parents have agreed to settle a lawsuit that alleged the distance learning program used by the Los Angeles Unified School District during the COVID-19 pandemic failed to meet state educational standards and disproportionately harmed Black and Latino students, a lawyer for the families said.
Attorneys for parents who filed the class-action lawsuit in 2020 said the agreement would require the nation’s second-largest school district to offer at least 45 hours of significant tutoring services a year to more than 100,000 of its most vulnerable students over the next three years in addition to teacher training and mandatory assessments. The goal is to help the district’s most disadvantaged students, the lawyers said.
The deal must be approved by the court to take effect.
“For nearly five years, we have fought tirelessly on behalf of LAUSD students and their families to enforce students’ constitutional right to basic educational equality,” Edward Hillenbrand, one of the plaintiffs’ pro bono attorneys, said in a statement on Wednesday.
A message seeking comment was sent to Los Angeles Unified.
The agreement ends a five-year court battle over Los Angeles Unified’s distance learning programs during school shutdowns. The case was dismissed in 2021 once schools were reopened but the parents, who have been supported by educational non-profits Parent Revolution and Innovate Public Schools, appealed. A state appeals court reinstated the case two years later.
The parents argued that the district failed to engage their children online at the same rate as other large California school districts and that state-mandated instructional minutes often lacked actual instruction. They said teachers would sometimes dismiss kids after checking they turned in their work and without going over new material, and complained it was not always possible to connect to the district’s platform.
In turn, they said their students began lagging behind grade-level standards and grew disinterested in school. The challenges disproportionately affected Black and Latino children, they said, who had lower weekly participation rates online than other students soon after the shutdowns began.
California schools had a range of pandemic learning models including some that offered hybrid schedules where students toggled between distance and smaller class settings and others that were solely online. Many districts were not allowed to fully reopen schools due to infection rates under the state’s rules.
Today, Los Angeles Unified has 400,000 students through 12th grade, and more than three-quarters are economically disadvantaged, according to district data.
Plaintiff Maritza Gonzalez said in the statement that the support is too late for her son, who is now in college, but she is thankful her daughter, who is starting high school, will have access to tutoring.
Wisconsin
December trial set for judge accused of helping man to evade arrest in courtroom
MADISON, Wis. (AP) — A Wisconsin judge accused of helping a man evade arrest in her courtroom by U.S. immigration agents will stand trial in December after she decided against appealing a federal judge’s ruling rejecting her attempt to dismiss the case.
Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Hannah Dugan’s attorneys said in federal court on Wednesday that she would not appeal the ruling at this time, but could later. U.S. District Judge Lynn Adelman then scheduled her trial to begin Dec. 15. It is expected to last about a week. Jury selection is set for Dec. 11 and Dec. 12.
Dugan’s case has highlighted the push by President Donald Trump’s administration to confront state and local authorities who resist his sweeping immigration crackdown.
Democrats have accused the administration of trying to make a national example of Dugan to chill judicial opposition to its deportation efforts.
She was arrested at the county courthouse in April and indicted on federal charges in May. Dugan argued that the charges should be dismissed, saying that she was acting in her official capacity as a judge and is therefore immune from prosecution.
Adelman last week rejected that argument and upheld the July recommendation of a magistrate judge who also ruled that the case could proceed.
Dugan is charged with concealing an individual to prevent arrest, a misdemeanor, and obstruction, which is a felony. She has pleaded not guilty and faces up to six years in prison and a $350,000 fine if convicted on both counts.
Prosecutors say Dugan escorted Eduardo Flores-Ruiz, 31, and his lawyer out of her courtroom through a back door on April 18 after learning that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents were in the courthouse seeking to arrest him for being in the country without permanent legal status.
Agents arrested Flores-Ruiz outside the courthouse after a brief foot chase.
Dugan, 66, was suspended with pay by the Wisconsin Supreme Court after she was indicted.
California
‘Ketamine Queen’ pleads guilty to selling fatal dose to Matthew Perry
LOS ANGELES (AP) — A woman branded as the “Ketamine Queen” pleaded guilty Wednesday to selling Matthew Perry the drug that killed the “Friends” star.
Jasveen Sangha pleaded guilty to five federal charges, including providing the ketamine that led to Perry’s death. Her trial had been planned to start later this month. She is the fifth and final defendant charged in Perry’s overdose death to admit guilt.
Perry’s mother, Suzanne Perry, and his stepfather, “Dateline” reporter Keith Morrison, sat in the audience.
Prosecutors had cast Sangha, a 42-year-old citizen of the U.S. and the U.K., as a prolific drug dealer who was known to her customers as the “Ketamine Queen,” using the term often in press releases and court documents.
Making good on a deal she signed on Aug. 18, Sangha pleaded guilty to one count of maintaining a drug-involved premises, three counts of distribution of ketamine, and one count of distribution of ketamine resulting in death.
Prosecutors agreed to drop three other counts related to the distribution of ketamine, and one count of distribution of methamphetamine that was unrelated to the Perry case.
The final plea deal came a year after federal prosecutors announced that five people had been charged in Perry’s Oct. 28, 2023 death after a sweeping investigation.
Sangha is scheduled to be sentenced on Dec. 10. She could get up to 65 years in prison. The judge is not bound to follow any terms of the plea agreement, but prosecutors said in the document that they will ask for less than the maximum. None of the co-defendants have been sentenced yet.
Sangha and Dr. Salvador Plasencia, who pleaded guilty in July, had been the primary targets of the investigation. Three other defendants — Dr. Mark Chavez, Kenneth Iwamasa and Erik Fleming — pleaded guilty in exchange for their cooperation, which included statements implicating Sangha and Plasencia.
Perry was found dead in his Los Angeles home by Iwamasa, his assistant. The medical examiner ruled that ketamine, typically used as a surgical anesthetic, was the primary cause of death.
Sangha presented a posh lifestyle on Instagram, with photos of herself with the rich and famous in cities around the globe. Prosecutors said she privately presented herself as a dealer who sold to the same kind of high-class customers.
Perry had been using ketamine through his regular doctor as a legal, but off-label, treatment for depression, which has become increasingly common. Perry, 54, sought more ketamine than his doctor would give him, and his search for more led him to Sangha through his friend Fleming about two weeks before his death, prosecutors said.
Fleming messaged Perry’s assistant saying her ketamine was “amazing” and that she deals only “with high end and celebs.”
Perry bought large amounts of ketamine from Sangha, including 25 vials for $6,000 in cash four days before his death, prosecutors said.
On the day of Perry’s death, Sangha told Fleming they should delete all the messages they had sent each other, according to her indictment.
Sangha has been in federal custody for about a year.
Perry struggled with addiction for many years, dating back to his time on “Friends.”
