Court Digest

New Mexico
New state law helps older residents get out of jury duty
SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) — A new state law will make it easier for older residents in New Mexico to permanently excuse themselves from jury service.

The law applies to state residents age 75 or older who have been summoned to jury duty.

They no longer will be required to submit a sworn, notarized statement if they want to be excused from jury service.

Starting June 18 when the new law takes effect, those qualifying New Mexicans can request an excusal online through the state court system’s jury website.

Another option is to call the local court for more information.

According to Census Bureau population estimates, 7% of New Mexicans are 75 years or older. That’s about 153,000 residents.

A statewide computer system used by courts for jury management since 2017 can automatically verify an individual’s date of birth. The computer database is updated twice annually from income tax, voter registration and driving records.

California
Judge tosses former Rep. Katie Hill’s suit against tabloid
LOS ANGELES (AP) — A lawsuit by former U.S. Rep. Katie Hill of California against the Daily Mail was dismissed Wednesday by a judge who said the tabloid was protected under the First Amendment when it published nude photos of her.

Judge Yolanda Orozco wrote in her decision that she accepted the Daily Mail’s argument that the publication of the photos was “a matter of public issue or public interest.”

Hill’s lawyer, Carrie Goldberg, indicated her client would appeal.

“DM said, and the court agreed, that Katie’s nudes were their free speech. We think the appellate court will disagree,” Goldberg tweeted  Wednesday.

“I sued the Daily Mail for their publication of my nonconsensual nude images,” Hill wrote on Twitter. “Today, we lost in court because a judge — not a jury — thinks revenge porn is free speech,”

Hill has also sued her ex-husband, Kenneth Heslep, and conservative news site redstate.com, alleging they distributed “nonconsensual porn” that helped torpedo her political career.

Hill, 33, resigned from Congress in 2019 after nude pictures of her and an aide were leaked.

She acknowledged having an inappropriate affair with a female campaign aide but denied allegations of a relationship with a male congressional staffer. A relationship with a congressional staffer would have violated House rules.

Hill had been part of a Democratic wave that knocked seven California Republicans out of office in 2018 when she defeated Republican Steve Knight for the 25th Congressional District seat, which covers northern Los Angeles County and part of Ventura County.

Republican Mike Garcia won Hill’s vacant House seat in November’s election.

California
Man who placed wife’s body in front of kids guilty of murder
SANTA ANA, Calif. (AP) — A Southern California man who killed his wife and propped up her body on a sofa as her children opened Christmas presents was convicted Wednesday of second-degree murder.

William Wallace, 39, of Anaheim could face 15 years to life in prison when he is sentenced in June, the Orange County district attorney’s office said in a statement.

Za’Zell Preston, 26, was taking college classes in hopes of becoming a domestic violence counselor when she was fatally beaten on Dec. 24 or early Dec. 25 in 2011 by Wallace, who already had served jail time for beating her, the statement said.

Prosecutors said the couple had gone to a neighbor’s Christmas Eve party, and a neighbor described hearing an argument later that night.

The next morning, according to the prosecution, Wallace dragged his wife’s body from the bedroom to the living room couch, placed sunglasses on her and told the children: “Mommy ruined Christmas, she got drunk and ruined Christmas.”

He then had them open their Christmas presents, authorities said.

Wallace’s attorney argued that Preston died from injuries after she drunkenly tripped and fell into a glass table, shattering it.

Preston was slumped over on the couch when paramedics arrived. She left a 7-week-old son and two daughters from a previous relationship, who were then 3 and 8 years old.

“A young mother finally losing her life after years of violence at the hands of her husband is a heart-wrenching tragedy,” District Attorney Todd Spitzer said in the statement. “That heartbreak is only exacerbated by the fact that her children witnessed much of the violence and were forced to celebrate Christmas in the presence of their dead mother. That is not a Christmas memory any child should be forced to have.”


Ohio
Court delays execution of inmate who slipped through cracks
COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — The Ohio Supreme Court on Thursday delayed the execution of a convicted killer whose case federal public defenders said slipped through the cracks of the legal system.

Death row inmate David Martin, 36, had been scheduled to die May 26. The Associated Press reported last year that he went without a lawyer for more than a year after the court upheld his sentence in 2018 and missed a chance to make a customary appeal to the federal courts.

Justices have now stayed Martin’s execution until all his legal options are exhausted.

Martin was sentenced to die in 2014 for fatally shooting 21-year-old Jeremy Cole during a robbery in northeastern Ohio two years earlier. Martin also shot Cole’s girlfriend in the head, severely wounding her.

When the state Supreme Court upholds a death sentence, it automatically sets an execution date. Attorneys representing inmates in their appeals normally ask the court to delay those dates while cases enter the federal system, a request the court automatically grants. Appeals often last years afterward.

In Martin’s case, though, no attorney initially took over his case, the request wasn’t made and his chance to appeal his death sentence appeared to be lost. Questions prompted by Martin’s outreach to the AP put his case on public defenders’ radar.
The high court’s temporary reprieve for Martin comes amid an unofficial death penalty moratorium in the state prompted by legal setbacks and challenges obtaining lethal injection drugs.

Republican Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine said last year that lethal injection is no longer an option, and he has asked state lawmakers to identify a different method. In the meantime, he has delayed a host of upcoming executions.

The state’s last execution was in July 2018.

South Dakota
Supreme Court to hear recreational marijuana case this month
PIERRE, S.D. (AP) — The South Dakota Supreme Court is expected to decide the fate of a voter-approved constitutional amendment legalizing recreational marijuana this spring.

The justices will hear oral arguments in a challenge to the amendment on April 28 at the state Capitol, the Argus Leader  reported. Attorneys representing the organization South Dakotans for Better Marijuana Laws appealed a lower court ruling striking down the amendment.

The ballot measure garnered 54% support in the Nov. 3 election.

Two law enforcement officers, Highway Patrol Superintendent Col. Rick Miller and Pennington County Sheriff Kevin Thom, sued to block marijuana legalization by challenging its constitutionality.

Miller was effectively acting on behalf of South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, who had opposed the effort to legalize pot. His legal expenses are being covered by the state, authorized by Gov. Kristi Noem through an executive order.

The attorneys, representing South Dakotans for Better Marijuana Laws and several other marijuana advocates, argued that their opponents should face a high burden to prove that the state’s constitution was violated by the amendment.

In February, a Hughes County judge ruled the measure was unconstitutional because it violated a requirement that constitutional amendments be limited to a single topic. Judge Christina Klinger also said the amendment gave sole governing authority around marijuana to the South Dakota Department of Revenue, not the Legislature.

A separate ballot measure legalizing medical marijuana only is set to take effect July 1.


North Carolina
Man who was wrongly imprisoned for 44 years gets $750,000
DURHAM, N.C. (AP) — A man who served nearly 44 years in prison for a crime he says he didn’t commit has received compensation from the state of North Carolina.

Ronnie Long told The Charlotte Observer that it’s not nearly enough.

Long received $750,000. It is by law the state’s top compensation for victims of wrongful incarceration.

Long’s attorney, Duke University law professor Jamie Lau, said the amount is inadequate for people who were imprisoned for decades.

Long was convicted of raping the widow of a Cannon Mills executive in 1976 by an all-white jury in Concord. Potentially exculpatory evidence was either intentionally withheld from his defense team or disappeared. And there was a tampered pool of potential jurors.

A federal court overturned Long’s conviction. He was released from prison in September. And he was pardoned by Gov. Roy Cooper.

“Fair? What’s fair?,” Long told newspaper. “Ask yourself that question when these people took away your 20s, your 30s, your 40s, your 50s and they started in on your 60s.”

Long said his mother and father both asked if he was home in the last moments of their lives. He walked free six weeks after his mother’s death.


California
Man accused of strangling ‘I-5 Strangler’ won’t face death
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — The man accused of strangling the California serial killer known as the “I-5 Strangler” won’t face the death penalty, a prosecutor said Wednesday.

Amador County District Attorney Todd Riebe said he had filed first-degree murder charges against Jason Budrow and will seek a sentence of life in prison without possibility of parole, the Sacramento Bee reported.

Budrow, 40, is accused of strangling Roger Reece Kibbe, whose body was discovered on Feb. 28 in their shared cell at Mule Creek State Prison southeast of Sacramento.

Budrow already is serving life without parole for strangling his then-girlfriend in 2011 in Riverside County.

Death penalty cases are costly and lengthy affairs that include automatic appeals. California hasn’t executed anyone since 2006 and Gov. Gavin Newsom has issued a moratorium on capital punishment while he is in office.

Kibbe, 81, was initially convicted in 1991 of strangling Darcine Frackenpohl, a 17-year-old who had run away from her home in Seattle. Her nearly nude body was found west of South Lake Tahoe below Echo Summit in September 1987.

Investigators said then that they suspected him in other similar slayings.

But it wasn’t until 2009 that a San Joaquin County District Attorney’s Office investigator used new developments in DNA evidence to connect him to additional slayings in Northern California counties.

Kibbe pleaded guilty to six additional killings in exchange for prosecutors not seeking the death penalty.

Those victims were Lou Ellen Burleigh, 21, in 1977 and Stephanie Brown, 19; Lora Heedrick, 20; Katherine Kelly Quinones, 25; Charmaine Sabrah, 26; and Barbara Ann Scott, 29, all in 1986.

Kibbe was serving multiple life terms without possibility of parole when he was killed.

In a letter to The Mercury News last month, Budrow said he killed Kibbe on the same day they became cellmates, initially so he would have a cell to himself.

“What had started out as my original bare-bones plan of doing a straightforward homicide of a cellmate to obtain my single-cell status evolved into a mission for avenging that youngest girl and all of Roger Kibbe’s other victims,” he wrote.