Polygamist leader’s conviction reversed

Utah’s high court unanimously rules against Warren Jeffs’ 2007 conviction of being an accomplice to the rape of a 14-year-old child bride. He still faces charges in Texas, which seeks to extradite him.

Polygamist leader Warren Jeffs smiles at a defense attorney in this 2007 photo. Jeffs’ conviction has been overturned but he remains in prison awaiting extradition to Texas. (Pool Photo, Reuters / July 26, 2010)

The Utah Supreme Court on Tuesday reversed the 2007 conviction of Warren Jeffs, a self-proclaimed prophet and polygamist who was found guilty of being an accomplice to the rape of a 14-year-old child bride.

The court agreed with defense lawyers that the judge erroneously told the jury that Jeffs could be convicted if he knew unwanted sex would result from the marriage he presided over between the girl and her older cousin.

The unanimous ruling makes it unlikely that Jeffs, the leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, can be tried again in Utah, state Atty. Gen. Mark Shurtleff said in a telephone interview. “It would be very difficult, based on this decision, to prosecute him,” Shurtleff said.

Jeffs, 54, received two sentences of life in prison for his 2007 conviction, which was the culmination of a lengthy campaign against underage marriage in the FLDS, a breakaway sect that has been disavowed by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and is based along the Utah- Arizona border.

Jeffs still faces charges of bigamy and sexual assault on a child in Texas, which is seeking to extradite him from Utah. He will continue to be held in state prison until that process finishes, Shurtleff said.

Jeffs’ conviction stemmed from his role in marrying the two cousins. The girl, Elissa Wall — who has since written a book about the case — implored FLDS authorities to stop the wedding. State prosecutors argued Jeffs was responsible for the subsequent rape, while defense attorneys contended that only the new husband was to blame.

Jeffs’ attorneys on Tuesday hailed the ruling. “Mr. Jeffs should never have been charged with being an accomplice to rape,” attorney Walter Bugden said at a televised news conference in Salt Lake City. “This is a case where the constitution really prevailed.”

Shurtleff’s office and local prosecutors in southern Utah were reviewing the ruling and said they had made no decision on whether to retry Jeffs. But Shurtleff was pessimistic. He said it appeared that no child marriages have been performed in Utah since 2005, when the state began to pursue Jeffs. He feared some other sect leaders may start trying to resume the practice in light of the ruling.

“It leaves us kind of scratching our heads as to how we can prevent this,” Shurtleff said.

nicholas.riccardi@latimes.com

A Bronx mother fatally shot her 12-year-old son in the head before blowing her brains out in what cops believe is a murder- suicide.

Micaela Jackson, 37, was found with the 9mm weapon still in her hand, lying in the same bed as her son, Kenneth Holmes, Jr., sources said.

“He was a gift, he was pure,” said the boy’s devastated father, who shares the same name as his son.

“It doesn’t make any sense to me. His mother was so strong. “I don’t know what would make her want to do that.”

The tragedy was discovered yesterday when Jackson’s sister grew concerned after not hearing from her in a while and went to the Morris Heights home at around 7:25 p.m. to see her.

The first-floor Loring Place apartment was locked and chained from the inside, so the increasingly worried sister got the building’s superintendent to open the door.

Together, they made the grisly discovery.

The tragedy came less than a week after a Staten Island mother, Leisa Jones, slit three of her children’s throats and then killed herself and her 2-year-old son by setting their apartment on fire.

Jackson and her son, who was autistic, lived by themselves. Sources said investigators were not looking for any suspects. The bloodshed left teary-eyed relatives at a loss to explain why Jackson would murder her child. Holmes Sr. said Jackson had recently been promoted at Montefiore Hospital, where she had been working as a secretary.

He added that they all enjoyed a recent family trip to Rye Playland.  “She was at a happy point in her life,” he said. A woman who identified herself as a cousin said, “She was a good person. I don’t know what happened.

“She was a really great mom, and the family is grieving right now.”  The heartbroken dad said he saw his son every Sunday, and the boy “had a great smile and a lot of charm.”

“Even if you had an evil heart, you’d still love him,” he said.

larry.celona@nypost.com

Mom guilty of recklessly causing daughter’s fatal injuries

By TERRI LANGFORD
Copyright 2010 Houston Chronicle

July 12, 2010, 9:58PM

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Melissa Phillip Chronicle

Abigail Young

Jurors convicted nurse Abigail Young on Monday for recklessly failing to protect her 4-year-old daughter from a fatal beating and other abuse, including sexual assault, bruises and a fractured skull.

Young, who faces up to 20 years in prison, broke into tears after jurors found her guilty of reckless serious bodily injury to a child by omission, following nearly four hours of deliberation. She was taken immediately into custody by sheriff’s deputies. The sentencing phase of her trial begins this morning.

By deciding Young’s failure to protect her daughter Emma Thompson, was “reckless,” jurors selected the lesser of two possible charges stemming from the Spring preschooler’s June 27, 2009, death. If they had been convinced that Young, a registered nurse and single mom “intentionally or knowingly” failed to protect her daughter, she could have faced a life sentence.

“Obviously, we are very happy that the jury did not find she was guilty of a committing a first-degree felony,” said Colin Amann, Young’s defense attorney.

Lead prosecutor Colleen Barnett said she was disappointed, but acknowledged the jurors’ hard work in reaching their conclusion.

“We asked for the knowingly,” she said. “The jury saw it differently.”

Signs of abuse

Emma died of blunt-force trauma to her abdomen, covered with 80 bruises when Young brought her to Memorial Hermann-The Woodlands Hospital a year ago. The girl had other signs of abuse: vaginal tearing, a busted lip, three broken ribs, a large skull split and bruises on her thighs.

Three weeks before Emma died, a pediatrician who noted bruising along Emma’s waist and sores in her mouth, suspected Emma had been abused and notified Texas Child Protective Services. A test confirmed Emma had genital herpes.

But a follow-up exam in which Emma was questioned in the presence of her mother failed to find evidence that the girl was sexually abused.

Boyfriend awaits trial

Doctors and the social worker who testified during the two-week trial said the recently divorced Young either denied to them or omitted important information about her relationship with a new man, Lucas Coe, who is in jail awaiting trial on a charge of raping Emma.

The last defense witness, Emma’s 12-year-old half-sister Laura Duty, testified Emma had two falls on the day she died. The first occurred while her mother was shopping for doughnuts and left her, and sisters Julia and Emma, in the care of Coe. Laura said she heard a slip, thud and then heard Emma crying. By the time she got to Emma, Coe was holding her.

“I heard a slip and then a thud,” Laura testified.

When Laura went to Emma, Coe brought paper towels to apply to a bleeding bump on her head. “Mr. Luke told me what happened.”

The second fall, in a bathroom, while Emma was on the toilet occurred while Young was grocery shopping and Coe was with left alone with the girls a second time.

After she came home, Duty said, her mom cooked sloppy joes for the girls, then checked on Emma. Instead of calling 911, Young put the girl in the car, thinking she would make it to the hospital faster than the ambulance could get to the home.

Young, who waived her right to testify in her own defense, sat with a stoic pout as her daughter’s videotaped testimony was played in the courtroom.

‘There weren’t red flags’

In closing arguments, defense attorneys Amann and Julie Ketterman painted their client as any concerned mom who failed — as did other adults close to Emma – to read what prosecutors now say were warning signs that her child may be in danger.

“Hindsight makes things so much clearer,” Ketterman told jurors. “There weren’t red flags then, but there are now because of hindsight. … Everything is always clearer in hindsight.”

Ketterman directed jurors to recall that three people who saw Emma up close in the weeks before her death, her aunt Amanda Matthews, her father Ben Thompson and her mother’s best friend, Melissa Green, never suspected the girl was in immediate danger.

But prosecutor Colleen Barnett zeroed in on a list of times Young failed to tell the entire truth to those dealing with Emma’s health after the little girl tested positive for genital herpes. Young insisted several times there was no new man in her life who would have had access to Emma, according to trial testimony and records she filled out for Texas Children’s Hospital when they conducted a June 17 exam on Emma.

“She lies and lies and lies,” Barnett said.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/7104434.html

Dad Accused Of Killing Son Appears In Court

Alex Duncan Accused Of Killing Tekerrious Jackson

HOUSTON — A father accused of beating his 6-year-old son to death faced a judge on Monday, KPRC Local 2 reported.

Alex Duncan, Tammyra Sampson

WATCH IT: Father Accused Of Beating Son To Death

Alex Duncan, 34, has been charged with murder.Houston police said Duncan beat his son, Tekerrious Jackson, over an eight-hour period from Saturday night into early Sunday, at an apartment on Polk Street near Lockwood Drive.

Investigators said Tekerrious was told to get on his knees with his arms up, and if he dropped them, Duncan would punch the boy in the chest.Tekerrious had not seen his father in about three years, police said. His mother decided to let him spend the summer with his father under the condition that they stayed with the boy’s grandmother, officials said.

Duncan moved out of the grandmother’s home a few weeks ago and took Tekerrious with him, police said. Detectives said that Duncan’s girlfriend, Tammyra Sampson, 30, witnessed the beatings. She told police that she once intervened to show Duncan how to properly discipline a child with a belt.

Sampson was arrested and charged with injury to a child by omission.  Sampson’s 11-year-old daughter was present during the beatings, officials said. She has been placed in the care of Child Protective Services.

July 9, 2010

Muskogee man accused of child abuse to stand trial

By Donna Hales Phoenix Staff Writer

About 20 members of Bikers Against Child Abuse were at the preliminary hearing of Dennis Miller, 45, bound over on seven felonies Friday.

BACA goes to child abuse cases to support victims.

A juvenile testified Friday that Miller, of Muskogee, threatened to snap her neck and put a specific type of bullet into her head if she did not comply with his order. She said he also chased her and her sister down an alley shortly after he was called to the police station for questioning in various child abuse or sex crimes. It caused the children in the case to have to hide and call for police protection.

The testimony matched allegations in charges filed.

Miller was bound over for trial on:

• Child sexual abuse.

• First-degree rape.

• Forcible oral sodomy — two counts.

• Attempted first-degree rape.

• Kidnapping.

• Assault and battery with a dangerous weapon.

• Intimidation of a witness.

Muskogee County Assistant District Attorney Nikki Baker said Miller probably will go to trial in September. The trial could be as late as February.

Reach Donna Hales at 684-2923 or dhales @muskogeephoenix.com.

Missing SC boy buried in concrete; dad arrested

As the fruitless search was on for a missing 2-year-old boy with an infectious smile, authorities believe that all along he was buried under 400 pounds of concrete in a trash can.

The boy’s father and his girlfriend were arrested Thursday, two days after the couple concocted a story about the boy falling into the Charleston Harbor near a popular tourist destination, authorities said.

On Wednesday, human remains were found that matched the description of the boy the couple had given. The body was wrapped in 32-gallon trash bags encased in concrete in a bin so heavy a farmer had to hoist it onto a county vehicle using a backhoe.

Authorities are awaiting DNA to confirm that it is Rodricus Williams, but they left little doubt they believe it is by charging Roger Williams and Grace Nichole Trotman with homicide by child abuse.

Police are still trying to figure out how the boy was killed, but Berkeley County Sheriff Wayne DeWitt said he had been beaten in the past and they were serving a hospital with search warrants to get more information on the treatment he received.

“During interviews, there was some talk about the child being struck on occasions,” DeWitt said. “Our interpretation is, it was not by accident.”

The saga started late Tuesday, Rodricus was reported missing to Charleston police. A woman said he possibly slipped through the railing at the Battery downtown, a tourist area and Civil War site known for its antebellum homes on the city’s peninsula. The boy’s mother was supposed to pick up Rodricus there, but police said he was never even in the area.

Officials and rescuers searched the historic harbor into the night by boat and helicopter, calling on nearly a dozen agencies to scour the sea and land for any sign of Rodricus. The boy’s father, Roger Williams, and his girlfriend, Grace Nichole Trotman, seemed to cooperate at first.

By 5 a.m. Wednesday, the search was abruptly called off. Later that day, interviews with Williams and Trotman led them to an abandoned mobile home in a rural area some 55 miles northwest of Charleston, where the remains were uncovered.

Trotman has been cooperating with police while Williams has given investigators false information, DeWitt said.

Trotman has been charged by Charleston police with filing a false report and her bond was set at $250,000. Another judge denied bond for both on the more serious charges later Thursday.

Williams had stopped speaking with police and asked for a lawyer. A public defender will be assigned to his case. Trotman did not qualify for a public defender but officials did not know if she yet had an attorney.

Police think Rodricus was killed in Trotman’s quiet neighborhood in Summerville, about 30 miles northwest of Charleston.

Norm Reece, who lives across the street, said Trotman had rented the one-story, vinyl-sided home for less than a year. Reece said she kept to herself and was often seen with Rodricus and her two other small children.

“She was very private,” Reece said. “It’s just a shock.”

Deputies walked along the neighborhood streets Thursday, asking about the couple. Reece said he saw deputies remove several evidence bags from Trotman’s home.

“It just can’t be understood,” said Reece, shaking his head. “A 2-year-old, innocent child — if you don’t want them, give them to social services. Don’t kill them.”

Search For Alisa’s Kidnapper “Over”

LOUISIANA, Mo. —

A registered sex offender who shot himself as officers approached him for questioning about the disappearance of 4-year-old northeast Missouri girl was almost certainly the man who took her, police said Thursday. Authorities on Thursday said 38-year-old Paul S. Smith of Hawk Point, Mo., was the suspect in the Monday abduction of Alisa Meier, who was found alive and unharmed the following evening. Smith died late Wednesday at a St. Charles hospital.It was a gruesome twist to the story of Alisa Maier, who was snatched from her front yard in Louisiana, Mo., Monday night. Her 6-year-old brother, Blake, told police a man in a dark-colored car pulled up and ordered Alisa to get in. “It’s over,” St. Louis County Police Chief Tim Fitch said at a news conference. “There’s no reason to believe at this point that anyone else was involved.”Alisa received a joyful homecoming Thursday.

The child smiled and appeared fine. Family members said her kidnapper didn’t harm her but did cut her hair to make her look like a boy.When Alisa saw Smith’s picture on television Wednesday night, she exclaimed, “That’s the man who cut my hair!” her father said.Family members thanked volunteers, law enforcement officials and others for their assistance in getting Alisa home safely. Smith was convicted in 1995 of sodomy in a case involving a 10-year-old boy, according to the Missouri State Highway Patrol’s registry of sex offenders. He served about 11 years in prison. Twenty-six hours after Alisa was kidnapped, a dark-colored car was seen at a car wash in St. Louis County, some 70 miles to the south. About the same time, a child was seen wandering around the car wash. It turned out to be Alisa. Police followed up on more than 100 leads in the search for her abductor. It wasn’t a tip, though, that led to Smith. Once Alisa was found safe, police noticed she was wearing new clothes. Tags on the clothes indicated they came from Wal-Mart, and police traced them to a store in Troy, about halfway between Louisiana and St. Louis County.

Surveillance video from the store showed a man matching Smith’s description. Smith also bought cigarettes at the store, requiring him to give a date of birth, which aided in the investigation. Fitch said the video surveillance did not indicate that Alisa was in the store with Smith when he bought the clothes. About 4:30 p.m. Wednesday, officers approached a tiny home in Hawk Point, Mo., a small community not far from Troy. Smith was spray painting his dark-colored car silver when officers approached, Fitch said. Without warning, Smith pulled out a handgun and shot himself. He died about six hours later. Authorities credited an Amber Alert, media and public attention for Alisa’s safe return. Relatives have said the girl was unharmed and that she told them she was treated well during her captivity, except for a haircut apparently administered by the suspect, perhaps to conceal her identity. Louisiana Police Chief Rich Hughes said the town of 3,800 residents had rallied around Alisa and her family. “A small community, you can imagine how this impacts them,” Hughes said at a news conference in St. Louis County. “To see Alisa come back home is great.” Her great-aunt, Angela Reddick, said a welcome-home party was planned for Saturday. “We’re just so happy,” Reddick said. “We can’t wait to see her and give her a big hug.” Celebratory messages graced church billboards and an electronic bank sign as Louisiana rejoiced in Alisa’s safe return. Visitors to the family’s small frame home left balloons and teddy bears on the porch and in the yard. “I turned on the news and my wife and I both started crying and fell down to our knees and thanked the Lord,” Terry Cook, a pastor who helped organize a prayer vigil for the child Tuesday night. The vigil drew 400 people, more than the town’s Fourth of July festival.

Fitch said law officers continue to investigate Smith’s background and whether he may have been involved in other unsolved missing child cases. Among them is the case of Bianca Piper, a 13-year-old girl who went missing from her home near Foley, Mo., in 2005. Foley and Louisiana are both situated along Missouri Route 79, and are about 25 miles apart. “You can’t ignore the similarities,” Fitch said.

Posted: Friday, 02 July 2010 11:11AM

Newark Man Arrested in Rape, Death of 7-Month-Old Girl

NEWARK, N.J. (AP/ 1010 WINS) — A man charged with sexually assaulting and killing his girlfriend’s 7-month-old daughter was arrested at his mother’s home.

Authorities picked up 24-year-old Oquan Blake on Thursday night. He’s accused of raping and murdering Dalaysia Rhymer, the daughter of a woman he had been dating. He is not the child’s father.

Authorities said Blake flew into a rage when the baby’s mother spent time with a friend.

The mother left her daughter in Blake’s care on June 26. When the baby’s grandmother unexpectedly had to go to a hospital with back pain, Blake was alone with the baby.

Before long, he called the child’s mother, saying the baby was getting on his nerves and asking her to come home.

The baby’s mother had planned to attend a gay pride rally in Manhattan, which irritated him, The Star-Ledger of Newark reported. But he grew even angrier when he learned the baby’s mother had skipped the event and was instead at a friend’s house.

She returned home to find the baby unresponsive and took her to a hospital, where she died two days later.

An autopsy determined the infant had a fractured skull, a ruptured spleen, broken ribs, a bruised spine and a lacerated liver. It also showed she had been sexually assaulted.

Blake and the child’s mother, whose identity was not released, had been dating for about three months. He had previously cared for the infant but never by himself.

The baby’s biological father lives out of state.

Calls seeking comment from the prosecutor’s office and the state public defender’s office were not immediately returned Friday.

The Associated Press

Wednesday, June 30, 2010 | 8:35 a.m.

Authorities say a 25-year-old Las Vegas man is accused of fracturing his 4-month-old son’s skull and ribs and putting the child in a freezer.

Randy Thomsen was due to appear Wednesday in Las Vegas Justice Court following his June 24 arrest on a felony charge of child abuse with substantial bodily harm. Records show Thomsen is being held at the Clark County jail on $20,000 bail.

Police say the mother’s 5-year-old daughter told investigators she saw Thomsen punch the boy and close him in a freezer.

Police say the boy was brought to a Las Vegas hospital June 4, and the 23-year-old mother told officials the child fell from a couch. The mother has not been charged with a crime.

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Information from: Las Vegas Sun, http://www.lasvegassun.com