Missouri
Former law officer convicted of double murder
ST. CHARLES, Mo. (AP) — A former Dent County sheriff’s deputy and state correctional officer has been convicted of killing his ex-girlfriend and her boyfriend during a child custody dispute.
Marvin Rice was found guilty Thursday in St. Charles County of first-degree murder in the 2011 deaths of Annette Durham, 32, and second-degree murder in the death of Steven Strotkamp, 39, in 2011, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported.
The sentencing phase begins Friday. Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty.
Rice and Durham had been arguing over custody of their son, prosecutors said.
They had had an affair while he was a Dent County sheriff’s deputy. Durham, who struggled with drug addiction, was jailed several times and the boy was born in 2010 while she was in prison. Rice and his wife took care of the child but no formal agreement was in place, Dent County Prosecuting Attorney Andrew Curley said during the trial.
When Durham got out of prison in 2011, she decided to get her life together and establish a relationship with her son, Curley said.
Rice initially allowed her only brief supervised visits with the boy. On Dec. 10, 2011, she was allowed an unsupervised visit and decided that she wanted to keep her son overnight, Curley said.
That prompted Rice to go to the home outside Salem where Durham and Strotkamp lived. He shot the couple with a .40-caliber pistol, took his son and gave the boy to his wife before leading police on a chase that ended in a shootout in a Jefferson City hotel during a Christmas party, Curley said.
Curley said Strotkamp identified Rice as his killer before he died. Durham’s daughter testified that she saw Rice with a pistol before he left with the boy.
Public defender Charles Hoskins told jurors that Rice “snapped” when Durham told him, “You’re never seeing (your son) again, and neither is your family.” He argued that Rice was under “extreme emotional distress” at the time and that a pituitary tumor and the 17 medications he was taking affected his impulse control and made him paranoid. He also argued that Rice didn’t have “cool reflection” necessary to convict him of first-degree murder.
New York
‘El Chapo’ seeking new lawyers in drug trafficking case
NEW YORK (AP) — Mexican drug lord and escape artist Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman wants to hire new lawyers in his U.S. drug trafficking case, but there’s questions about how they’ll get paid.
Guzman is set to appear Monday in federal court in Brooklyn where a judge is expected to address questions about whether he can replace his public defense lawyers with private ones.
His current legal team has asked for assurances from prosecutors that if he hires the private lawyers, the government won’t later seek forfeiture of any legal fees based on arguments the money came from his estimated $14 billion in drug profits.
Prosecutors have argued that taxpayers shouldn’t have to pay for his defense. But they also said in a letter to the court last week that the government will not “grant a blanket prospective assurance” that it won’t go after money spent on a private defense.
One of the private lawyers seeking to represent Guzman successfully defended John “Junior” Gotti, son of the notorious organized crime family boss, at a 2005 trial. The younger Gotti walked free after an acquittal on a securities fraud count and a mistrial on more serious racketeering counts.
In phone interviews with The Associated Press last week, the lawyer, Jeffrey Lichtman, said he’s more concerned about getting the court to sign off on the change of lawyers than about legal fees.
Mexico extradited Guzman in January to the U.S., where he pleaded not guilty to charges that his drug trafficking operation, the Sinaloa cartel, laundered billions of dollars and oversaw a ruthless campaign of murders and kidnappings.
The defense has claimed that he’s being held in inhumane and overly restrictive conditions at a high-security jail in Manhattan known for housing alleged mobsters and terrorists.
The government has argued that his strict jail conditions are appropriate for someone who escaped from prison twice in Mexico, including once through a mile-long (1.6-kilometer-long) tunnel dug to the shower in his cell. Prosecutors said that even while he was behind bars in Mexico, Guzman used coded messages, bribes and other means to control his Sinaloa cartel and orchestrate his breakouts.
North Carolina
Judge: Wrongly imprisoned man must have exam
RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — A man freed after 30 years on death row will undergo a competency evaluation as a judge considers whether his lawyers in a civil suit are properly representing him.
U.S. District Judge Terrence Boyle ruled Friday that Henry McCollum must be evaluated before his lawsuit can proceed against investigators who put him behind bars.
A court-appointed advocate argues McCollum was steered into dubious financial arrangements by his lawyers and he didn’t have the mental capacity to understand his representation agreement with them.
McCollum and his half-brother were released from prison in 2014 because of DNA evidence and later pardoned of a 1983 killing. Their 2015 civil lawsuit notes both have intellectual disabilities.
McCollum testified last week that he can take care of his own affairs and he trusts his lawyers.
North Carolina
Woman seeks retrial in killing
WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. (AP) — An attorney for a North Carolina woman is asking for a new trial or sentencing after she was convicted of killing her husband on a South Carolina beach.
A lawyer for Kimberly Renee Poole, 40, formerly of Mocksville, is asking for post-conviction relief in Horry County, South Carolina, The Winston-Salem Journal reported.
Poole was convicted in 1999 of first-degree murder and conspiracy in the 1998 shooting death of Brent Poole, 24, at Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.
Prosecutors say she was having an affair with John Boyd Frazier Jr., 47, formerly of Winston-Salem, and asked him to kill her husband. Frazier is serving a 30-year-sentence for murder, armed robbery and conspiracy after he was convicted in 2005.
Poole is serving a life sentence at Leath Correctional Institution in Greenwood, South Carolina.
Attorney Charles Grose says Poole’s previous lawyers did a poor job defending her, saying they devoted little time to her case before the trial.
Prosecutors said Poole was walking on the beach with her husband when he was shot twice in the head. She told police a robber had killed her husband.
Robert Kittle, a spokesman for the South Carolina Attorney General’s office would not talk about Poole’s request. But Kittle said the office will respond to the latest appeal within 90 days.
