California
Appeals court overturns former UCLA gynecologist’s sex abuse conviction
LOS ANGELES (AP) — A California appeals court on Monday overturned a sex abuse conviction against a former University of California, Los Angeles, gynecologist and ordered the case to be retried.
A three-justice panel from California’s 2nd District Court of Appeal ruled Dr. James Heaps was denied a fair trial because the judge did not share with his defense counsel a note by the court’s foreman pointing out concerns that one juror lacked sufficient English to carry out their duties.
Heaps’ attorney, Leonard Levine, said he and his team were not aware of the note or that there was any question about a juror’s ability to serve until two years later when an attorney working on an appeal discovered it in a court file.
If the attorney had not seen it, “it still would have remained a secret, which is very unfortunate since it would have been a miscarriage of justice, but thankfully it’s been corrected,” Levine said.
Heaps was sentenced in 2023 to 11 years in prison after his conviction on charges he sexually abused female patients.
“Justice is slow but it’s finally been done,” he said, adding “I believe it’s just a matter of time before he is totally exonerated.”
Heaps was accused of sexually assaulting hundreds of patients during his 35-year career and UCLA made nearly $700 million in payouts over lawsuits connected to the allegations — a record amount at the time for a public university.
He pleaded not guilty to 21 felony counts in the sexual assaults of seven women between 2009 and 2018. He was convicted in October 2022 of three counts of sexual battery by fraud and two counts of sexual penetration of two patients. The jury found him not guilty of seven of the 21 counts and was deadlocked on the remaining charges.
In the 31-page ruling, the appellate court panel pointed out that within about one hour of Juror No. 15 being seated as a substitute for a juror who had a medical issue, concerns were raised about whether the person was qualified to serve. The foreman’s note indicated that Juror No. 15 did not speak English well enough to participate in the deliberations, the ruling stated.
Prosecutors have 30 days to appeal the ruling. The Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office said in an email to The Associated Press that it plans to retry Heaps as soon as possible.
The panel stated that the problem was too grave to not order a retrial.
“We recognize the burden on the trial court and regrettably, on the witnesses, in requiring retrial of a case involving multiple victims and delving into the conduct of intimate medical examinations,” the ruling stated. “The importance of the constitutional right to counsel at critical junctures in a criminal trial gives us no other choice.”
California
Lawsuit accuses doctor of violating Texas’ anti-abortion laws
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — A man this week accused a California doctor of violating Texas’ anti-abortion policies, testing a new law in the GOP-led state allowing private citizens to sue abortion pill providers for mailing the medication.
The lawsuit comes after Louisiana, also a Republican-led state, last month pushed to extradite Dr. Rémy Coeytaux, who is based in the San Francisco Bay Area, accusing him of illegally mailing abortion pills. California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, said in January he blocked Louisiana’s attempt to punish the doctor.
Texas and Louisiana have some of the strictest anti-abortion laws in the country, while California aims to protect abortion providers from criminal prosecution for treating out-of-state patients.
The lawsuit in Texas, filed Sunday by a man named Jerry Rodriguez, accuses Coeytaux of breaking Texas law banning anyone from providing a pregnant woman with abortion medication.
Rodriguez was dating a woman who became pregnant with their child, the lawsuit says. The woman’s estranged husband then ordered abortion medication from Coeytaux, which she used to terminate her pregnancy, it says. The lawsuit accuses Coeytaux of wrongful death and seeks $100,000 in damages.
Coeytaux might be the first doctor sued under the Texas law allowing private citizens to file lawsuits over the issue, according to the Center for Reproductive Rights, a legal group defending him.
“Texas officials have already been going after doctors outside their borders, and now they’ve incentivized private citizens to do their bidding,” said Nancy Northup, the center’s president and CEO, in a statement.
Virginia
Man in ‘au pair affair’ case convicted of murdering wife and another man in elaborate ruse
A Virginia man having an affair with the family’s Brazilian au pair was found guilty Monday of murdering his wife and another man that prosecutors say was lured to the house as a fall guy.
Brendan Banfield, a former IRS law enforcement officer, told police he came across Joseph Ryan attacking his wife, Christine Banfield, with a knife on the morning of Feb. 24, 2023. He shot Ryan and then Juliana Magalhães, the au pair, shot him, too.
But officials argued in court that the story was too good to be true, telling jurors that Banfield set Ryan up in a scheme to get rid of his wife. It later came out that Brendan Banfield and Magalhães had been having an affair.
The verdict comes after the gruesome and complicated double homicide was catapulted into mainstream media in Brazil, the U.S. and elsewhere in the world.
“The details of this case attracted national attention — because it involved an affair, a fetish website and a premeditated plot,” Fairfax County Commonwealth’s Attorney Steve Descano said following the verdict. “But beyond the spectacle, we are here today because of the tragic deaths of two of our community members, Christine Banfield and Joseph Ryan.”
Prosecutors argued that Banfield and Magalhães impersonated Christine Banfield, a pediatric intensive care nurse, on a website for sexual fetishes. Officials said they used the site to lure Ryan to the house for a sexual encounter involving a knife, left the front door open and staged the scene to look as though they had shot an intruder who was attacking the wife.
Magalhães pleaded guilty to manslaughter in 2024 and testified against her former lover at trial, corroborating prosecutors’ theory.
Defense attorney John Carroll argued that Magalhães’ testimony could not be trusted because she was cooperating with prosecutors to try to avoid a long prison sentence. In his own testimony, Banfield said that the testimony was “ absolutely crazy.”
Carroll also introduced evidence showing that there was dissent within the police department over the theory that Magalhães and Brendan Banfield impersonated Christine Banfield on social media in a “catfishing” scheme. An officer who concluded from digital evidence that Christine Banfield was behind the social media account was later transferred in what Carroll said was punishment for disagreeing with a theory favored by the department’s higher-ups.
But prosecutor Jenna Sands pushed back on the notion that Banfield was unfamiliar with social media platforms for people interested in fetishes and couldn’t be capable of such catfishing.
“You had multiple affairs, correct?” Sands asked the defendant, followed by, “And one of those affairs was with a woman named Danielle, who you met on a fetish site searching for ‘sugar babies.’ Is that correct?”
Banfield replied: “I would not call it a fetish site.” When pressed as to how he would describe the website, Banfield testified that he had an arranged relationship with someone who knew he was married.
In closing arguments, Sands told the jury they did not have to rely solely on Magalhães’ testimony, pointing to what she called a “plethora of evidence.” That included expert testimony that blood stains on Ryan’s hands suggested Christine Banfield’s blood had been dripped onto him from above.
Banfield was also convicted of child endangerment. Banfield’s daughter, 4 years old at the time, was in the home’s basement on the day of the killings, though physically unharmed.
The jury deliberated for nearly nine hours across two days before reaching a verdict. Banfield faces the possibility of life in prison at his sentencing hearing, which is scheduled for May 8.
Magalhães was scheduled to be sentenced after Banfield’s trial. Attorneys have said she could be allowed to walk free if she is sentenced to time served and return to her home in Brazil.
Arizona
3 fraternity members arrested in death of student after rush event
A Northern Arizona University student found dead at a fraternity house drank a large amount of vodka during an initiation event and some partygoers suspected he may have had alcohol poisoning, according to court documents released Monday.
Witnesses told police that some people looked up the symptoms of alcohol poisoning online after hearing the 18-year-old snoring loudly around 3 a.m. Saturday, and readjusted his sleeping position and checked his pulse and breathing, the documents said.
About six hours later, the student was found unresponsive, police said in the documents laying out the reasons three members of the fraternity were arrested.
People at the Delta Tau Delta house performed CPR on him and the student wasn’t breathing when officers arrived, police said on Saturday. Officers continued life-saving measures until paramedics arrived, but the student, whose name hasn’t been released, died at the scene, police said.
Three 20-year-old leaders in the fraternity — new member educator Carter Eslick, vice president Ryan Creech and treasurer Riley Cass — were arrested on the criminal charge of hazing, police said. Lawyers representing each of them did not immediately return telephone calls seeking comment. Home telephone numbers for the three couldn’t be immediately found.
According to the documents, Cass had put the victim on an air mattress on his side on Friday night and remained near him until around 6 a.m. The student was last heard speaking late Friday and was discovered unresponsive at 8:44 a.m. Saturday, the documents said.
The victim and three others people identified as candidates to join the fraternity passed around and shared two large bottles of vodka to ensure they vomited, the documents said, though some witnesses told investigators they thought the vodka had been diluted with water.
The cause of death is under investigation, said Trish Lees, a spokesperson for the Coconino County Medical Examiner’s Office
The international leader of the fraternity, which is based in Indiana, said the group is encouraging its members to participate in the investigation into the student’s death and is committed to understanding what led to it.
“Our position on hazing is clear: it is the antithesis of brotherhood and a violation of the values of Delta Tau Delta,” fraternity CEO Jack Kreman said in a statement.
The university said the Northern Arizona chapter of the fraternity has been temporarily suspended while the school conducts its own investigation focused on its policies. In a statement, the university said it had robust hazing prevention training and requirements.
“We want to be clear: The safety and well-being of our students remain our highest priorities. Violence, hazing or any other behavior that endangers others has no place at NAU,” it said.
Appeals court overturns former UCLA gynecologist’s sex abuse conviction
LOS ANGELES (AP) — A California appeals court on Monday overturned a sex abuse conviction against a former University of California, Los Angeles, gynecologist and ordered the case to be retried.
A three-justice panel from California’s 2nd District Court of Appeal ruled Dr. James Heaps was denied a fair trial because the judge did not share with his defense counsel a note by the court’s foreman pointing out concerns that one juror lacked sufficient English to carry out their duties.
Heaps’ attorney, Leonard Levine, said he and his team were not aware of the note or that there was any question about a juror’s ability to serve until two years later when an attorney working on an appeal discovered it in a court file.
If the attorney had not seen it, “it still would have remained a secret, which is very unfortunate since it would have been a miscarriage of justice, but thankfully it’s been corrected,” Levine said.
Heaps was sentenced in 2023 to 11 years in prison after his conviction on charges he sexually abused female patients.
“Justice is slow but it’s finally been done,” he said, adding “I believe it’s just a matter of time before he is totally exonerated.”
Heaps was accused of sexually assaulting hundreds of patients during his 35-year career and UCLA made nearly $700 million in payouts over lawsuits connected to the allegations — a record amount at the time for a public university.
He pleaded not guilty to 21 felony counts in the sexual assaults of seven women between 2009 and 2018. He was convicted in October 2022 of three counts of sexual battery by fraud and two counts of sexual penetration of two patients. The jury found him not guilty of seven of the 21 counts and was deadlocked on the remaining charges.
In the 31-page ruling, the appellate court panel pointed out that within about one hour of Juror No. 15 being seated as a substitute for a juror who had a medical issue, concerns were raised about whether the person was qualified to serve. The foreman’s note indicated that Juror No. 15 did not speak English well enough to participate in the deliberations, the ruling stated.
Prosecutors have 30 days to appeal the ruling. The Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office said in an email to The Associated Press that it plans to retry Heaps as soon as possible.
The panel stated that the problem was too grave to not order a retrial.
“We recognize the burden on the trial court and regrettably, on the witnesses, in requiring retrial of a case involving multiple victims and delving into the conduct of intimate medical examinations,” the ruling stated. “The importance of the constitutional right to counsel at critical junctures in a criminal trial gives us no other choice.”
California
Lawsuit accuses doctor of violating Texas’ anti-abortion laws
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — A man this week accused a California doctor of violating Texas’ anti-abortion policies, testing a new law in the GOP-led state allowing private citizens to sue abortion pill providers for mailing the medication.
The lawsuit comes after Louisiana, also a Republican-led state, last month pushed to extradite Dr. Rémy Coeytaux, who is based in the San Francisco Bay Area, accusing him of illegally mailing abortion pills. California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, said in January he blocked Louisiana’s attempt to punish the doctor.
Texas and Louisiana have some of the strictest anti-abortion laws in the country, while California aims to protect abortion providers from criminal prosecution for treating out-of-state patients.
The lawsuit in Texas, filed Sunday by a man named Jerry Rodriguez, accuses Coeytaux of breaking Texas law banning anyone from providing a pregnant woman with abortion medication.
Rodriguez was dating a woman who became pregnant with their child, the lawsuit says. The woman’s estranged husband then ordered abortion medication from Coeytaux, which she used to terminate her pregnancy, it says. The lawsuit accuses Coeytaux of wrongful death and seeks $100,000 in damages.
Coeytaux might be the first doctor sued under the Texas law allowing private citizens to file lawsuits over the issue, according to the Center for Reproductive Rights, a legal group defending him.
“Texas officials have already been going after doctors outside their borders, and now they’ve incentivized private citizens to do their bidding,” said Nancy Northup, the center’s president and CEO, in a statement.
Virginia
Man in ‘au pair affair’ case convicted of murdering wife and another man in elaborate ruse
A Virginia man having an affair with the family’s Brazilian au pair was found guilty Monday of murdering his wife and another man that prosecutors say was lured to the house as a fall guy.
Brendan Banfield, a former IRS law enforcement officer, told police he came across Joseph Ryan attacking his wife, Christine Banfield, with a knife on the morning of Feb. 24, 2023. He shot Ryan and then Juliana Magalhães, the au pair, shot him, too.
But officials argued in court that the story was too good to be true, telling jurors that Banfield set Ryan up in a scheme to get rid of his wife. It later came out that Brendan Banfield and Magalhães had been having an affair.
The verdict comes after the gruesome and complicated double homicide was catapulted into mainstream media in Brazil, the U.S. and elsewhere in the world.
“The details of this case attracted national attention — because it involved an affair, a fetish website and a premeditated plot,” Fairfax County Commonwealth’s Attorney Steve Descano said following the verdict. “But beyond the spectacle, we are here today because of the tragic deaths of two of our community members, Christine Banfield and Joseph Ryan.”
Prosecutors argued that Banfield and Magalhães impersonated Christine Banfield, a pediatric intensive care nurse, on a website for sexual fetishes. Officials said they used the site to lure Ryan to the house for a sexual encounter involving a knife, left the front door open and staged the scene to look as though they had shot an intruder who was attacking the wife.
Magalhães pleaded guilty to manslaughter in 2024 and testified against her former lover at trial, corroborating prosecutors’ theory.
Defense attorney John Carroll argued that Magalhães’ testimony could not be trusted because she was cooperating with prosecutors to try to avoid a long prison sentence. In his own testimony, Banfield said that the testimony was “ absolutely crazy.”
Carroll also introduced evidence showing that there was dissent within the police department over the theory that Magalhães and Brendan Banfield impersonated Christine Banfield on social media in a “catfishing” scheme. An officer who concluded from digital evidence that Christine Banfield was behind the social media account was later transferred in what Carroll said was punishment for disagreeing with a theory favored by the department’s higher-ups.
But prosecutor Jenna Sands pushed back on the notion that Banfield was unfamiliar with social media platforms for people interested in fetishes and couldn’t be capable of such catfishing.
“You had multiple affairs, correct?” Sands asked the defendant, followed by, “And one of those affairs was with a woman named Danielle, who you met on a fetish site searching for ‘sugar babies.’ Is that correct?”
Banfield replied: “I would not call it a fetish site.” When pressed as to how he would describe the website, Banfield testified that he had an arranged relationship with someone who knew he was married.
In closing arguments, Sands told the jury they did not have to rely solely on Magalhães’ testimony, pointing to what she called a “plethora of evidence.” That included expert testimony that blood stains on Ryan’s hands suggested Christine Banfield’s blood had been dripped onto him from above.
Banfield was also convicted of child endangerment. Banfield’s daughter, 4 years old at the time, was in the home’s basement on the day of the killings, though physically unharmed.
The jury deliberated for nearly nine hours across two days before reaching a verdict. Banfield faces the possibility of life in prison at his sentencing hearing, which is scheduled for May 8.
Magalhães was scheduled to be sentenced after Banfield’s trial. Attorneys have said she could be allowed to walk free if she is sentenced to time served and return to her home in Brazil.
Arizona
3 fraternity members arrested in death of student after rush event
A Northern Arizona University student found dead at a fraternity house drank a large amount of vodka during an initiation event and some partygoers suspected he may have had alcohol poisoning, according to court documents released Monday.
Witnesses told police that some people looked up the symptoms of alcohol poisoning online after hearing the 18-year-old snoring loudly around 3 a.m. Saturday, and readjusted his sleeping position and checked his pulse and breathing, the documents said.
About six hours later, the student was found unresponsive, police said in the documents laying out the reasons three members of the fraternity were arrested.
People at the Delta Tau Delta house performed CPR on him and the student wasn’t breathing when officers arrived, police said on Saturday. Officers continued life-saving measures until paramedics arrived, but the student, whose name hasn’t been released, died at the scene, police said.
Three 20-year-old leaders in the fraternity — new member educator Carter Eslick, vice president Ryan Creech and treasurer Riley Cass — were arrested on the criminal charge of hazing, police said. Lawyers representing each of them did not immediately return telephone calls seeking comment. Home telephone numbers for the three couldn’t be immediately found.
According to the documents, Cass had put the victim on an air mattress on his side on Friday night and remained near him until around 6 a.m. The student was last heard speaking late Friday and was discovered unresponsive at 8:44 a.m. Saturday, the documents said.
The victim and three others people identified as candidates to join the fraternity passed around and shared two large bottles of vodka to ensure they vomited, the documents said, though some witnesses told investigators they thought the vodka had been diluted with water.
The cause of death is under investigation, said Trish Lees, a spokesperson for the Coconino County Medical Examiner’s Office
The international leader of the fraternity, which is based in Indiana, said the group is encouraging its members to participate in the investigation into the student’s death and is committed to understanding what led to it.
“Our position on hazing is clear: it is the antithesis of brotherhood and a violation of the values of Delta Tau Delta,” fraternity CEO Jack Kreman said in a statement.
The university said the Northern Arizona chapter of the fraternity has been temporarily suspended while the school conducts its own investigation focused on its policies. In a statement, the university said it had robust hazing prevention training and requirements.
“We want to be clear: The safety and well-being of our students remain our highest priorities. Violence, hazing or any other behavior that endangers others has no place at NAU,” it said.
