Court Digest

Washington
Neo-Nazi who led effort to threaten journalists gets 3 years in prison
SEATTLE (AP) — An organizer of a neo-Nazi campaign to threaten journalists and Jewish activists in three states was sentenced Tuesday to three years in prison after apologizing for what he did and saying he’s a changed man.

Cameron Shea was one of four members of the neo-Nazi group Atomwaffen Division charged last year with having cyberstalked and sent Swastika-laden posters to journalists and an employee of the Anti-Defamation League, telling them, “You have been visited by your local Nazis,” “Your Actions have Consequences,” and “We are Watching.”

“The defendant wanted the victims to feel unsafe in their own homes,” prosecutors wrote in a sentencing memorandum.

Shea, 25, pleaded guilty in April in U.S. District Court in Seattle to two of the counts in the five-count indictment: a conspiracy charge that carries up to five years in prison and interference with a federally protected activity, which carries up to 10. Prosecutors sought a term of more than four years.

In a letter to Judge John C. Coughenour, Shea apologized, saying, “I cannot put into words the guilt that I feel about this fear and pain that I caused.”

Shea wrote that he was homeless, struggling with addiction and dealing with a friend’s death when he began researching neo-Nazism. He said he has befriended detainees of other races while in custody and he now understands that journalists play a crucial role in holding institutions and individuals to account.

“The only reason I disliked the media was because I was partaking in things I didn’t want to be known to the public, because on some level I knew the things I was involved in were wrong,” he wrote.

Motivated by negative news coverage of the Atomwaffen Division, Shea made clear in a November 2019 group chat that the point of the plot was to intimidate journalists and others.

On Jan. 25, 2020, Shea mailed the threatening fliers to two people associated with the Anti-Defamation League, which opposes anti-Semitism, and to a news reporter who had covered Atomwaffen. Conspirators in Arizona and Florida delivered or attempted to deliver the fliers to targets there, as well.

The other defendant accused of leading the plot, Kaleb Cole, has pleaded not guilty and is due to face trial in September. Seattle police seized Cole’s guns in 2019 under an “extreme risk protection order” that suggested he was planning a race war.

More than a dozen people linked to Atomwaffen or an offshoot called Feuerkrieg Division have been charged with crimes in federal court since the group’s formation in 2016.

Atomwaffen has been linked to several killings, including the May 2017 shooting deaths of two men at an apartment in Tampa, Florida, and the January 2018 killing of a University of Pennsylvania student in California.

Two other members of the flier conspiracy have been sentenced after pleading guilty: Johnny Roman Garza, 21, of Queen Creek, Arizona, who affixed one of the posters on the bedroom window of a Jewish journalist; and Taylor Parker-Dipeppe, 21, of Spring Hill, Florida, who attempted to deliver a flier but left it at the wrong address.

Garza was sentenced to 16 months in prison. Parker-Dipeppe, who was severely abused by his father and stepfather and hid his transgender identity from his co-conspirators, received no prison time — a judge found that he had suffered enough.


Florida
Ex-deputy gets 35 years for child porn charges
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. (AP) — A former Florida deputy accused of having sex with a 15-year-old girl has been sentenced to 35 years in federal prison.

Travis Ryan Pritchard, 38, was sentenced Tuesday in Jacksonville federal court, according to court records. He pleaded guilty last year to producing an image of a child being sexually abused and possessing an image of a prepubescent child being sexually abused. The former Clay County deputy had faced up to 50 years in prison.

Pritchard began communicating with the girl through an online chat application in December 2019 after meeting her several months earlier at a convenience store, according to a criminal complaint. The two exchanged explicit photos and eventually began having sex on a weekly basis, with Pritchard sneaking into her Green Grove Springs home after her parents went to sleep, investigators said. Green Cove Springs is just south of Jacksonville.

The girl’s mother contacted police in April 2020 and reported that her teenage daughter was having sex with an adult man. A detective took over the girl’s chat account and continued to exchange messages with Pritchard, officials said. They made arrangements to meet at the girl’s home the night of May 1, 2020. The complaint said Pritchard arrived at her home in his patrol vehicle early the next morning and was arrested a short time later.

A forensic review of Pritchard’s cellphone yielded multiple conversations between the girl and Pritchard, as well as an encrypted secure digital folder that contained multiple depictions of child sexual abuse, investigators said.


Oklahoma
Man at center of tribal sovereignty case sentenced
MUSKOGEE, Okla. (AP) — A member of the Seminole Nation in Oklahoma whose case led to a landmark decision on criminal jurisdiction in tribal lands has been sentenced to life in federal prison for sexual abuse of a child.

Federal prosecutors in Muskogee announced late Wednesday that Jimcy McGirt, 72, was sentenced to life in prison for two counts of aggravated sexual abuse in Indian Country.

McGirt was originally convicted in a state court and sentenced to 500 years in prison in 1997 for the assaults that occurred on Muscogee (Creek) Nation land.

But the U.S. Supreme Court ruled last year that the tribe’s reservation had never been disestablished and either federal courts or tribal nations have jurisdiction over crimes committed by or against Native Americans on tribal land, not the state.

He was subsequently charged in federal court in Muskogee, where a federal jury convicted him in November of sexually assaulting a 4-year-old child. The victim, now in her late 20s, testified in his case.

“The sentences imposed today are the culmination of many hours of investigation, case preparation, legal research and case presentation by Assistant United States Attorneys Sarah McAmis and Courtney Jordan,” acting U.S. Attorney Christopher Wilson said in a statement.

McGirt’s attorney, Richard O’Carroll, said McGirt planned to appeal his conviction.

Texas
Man pleads guilty to 1974 slaying of 17-year-old girl
FORT WORTH, Texas (AP) — A man stopped his capital murder trial Tuesday with a guilty plea to the 1974 killing of a 17-year-old Texas girl.

Glen McCurley, 78, of Fort Worth, was immediately sentenced to life imprisonment for the abduction, torture, rape and killing of Carla Walker.

Prosecutors had said they would not seek the death penalty for McCurley, who admitted to police that he had killed Walker. A video recording of that interview was played for jurors.

The Fort Worth high school student was in a car with her boyfriend outside a Valentine’s Day party at a bowling alley the night of Feb. 17, 1974, when a man pistol-whipped the boy and grabbed Walker. Her body was found three days later stuffed in a culvert near Lake Benbrook, which is near where the abduction happened.

McCurley had been one of a number of people under suspicion since the crime occurred, but investigators had been unable to link him definitively to Walker’s death.

The case had gone unsolved for 46 years before investigators reopened it in 2019. Only when DNA technology advanced to the point where a complete genetic profile could be developed from evidence gleaned from the girl’s clothing could a solid link be made and McCurley be charged a year later, police had said.


West Virginia
Judge: More families can join lawsuit over school services
CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — A federal judge has ruled that a West Virginia civil case involving school support services for children with disabilities can become a class-action suit.

U.S. District Judge Irene Berger issued the ruling Tuesday in a 2020 lawsuit filed by a couple of parents and a national disabilities rights group called The Arc, the  Charleston Gazette-Mail reported. The suit could now encompass more than 1,000 children in Kanawha County public schools who need behavioral support, the newspaper said.

“We can now proceed to hopefully change the way Kanawha County is providing services to all students with disabilities, not just those individual kids,” said attorney Lydia Milnes of the nonprofit law firm Mountain State Justice. “So the families have always, since the beginning, wanted to see change that was bigger than just them.”

Kanawha County school officials declined to comment.

Berger wrote in the ruling that “students with disabilities in Kanawha County are subject to disciplinary removals at a rate disproportionate to their non-disabled peers, and at a higher and more-disproportionate rate than students with disabilities in most other school districts in the state and most other large school districts nationally.”

She ordered the parties to try to mediate the dispute before continuing with litigation.

Washington
Parents file lawsuit after children injured on Tilt-A-Whirl
BREMERTON, Wash. (AP) — The families of children who were injured on the Tilt-A-Whirl at the Kitsap County Fair in 2018 are suing the owner of the amusement company that operated the ride at the fair’s carnival and its manufacturer.

The lawsuit filed in Kitsap County Superior Court names the owner of the Tilt-A-Whirl ride, Davis Amusement Cascadia Inc., and the manufacturer of the equipment, J&S Rides Inc., dba Larson International, the Kitsap Sun reported.

At about 1 p.m. on Aug. 28, 2018, a Tilt-A-Whirl car derailed and six children were injured, the lawsuit said. One car detached and slammed into a railing. It flipped over, landed on its back and collided with other cars, the lawsuit said.

Parents of children from three families seek compensation for injuries, infliction of emotional distress and damages, according to the suit.

One child hit his head twice and was diagnosed with post-concussion syndrome, the lawsuit said. Another hit her pelvis and back, and the third child hit her head, according to the lawsuit.

The derailed car hit another car and caused three children in that car to sustain injuries.

A representative of J&S Rides, headquartered in Texas, said the company had not yet been served with the lawsuit and could not comment to the Kitsap Sun.


California
Nirvana sued by man who was nude baby on ‘Nevermind’ cover
LOS ANGELES (AP) — A 30-year-old man who appeared nude at 4 months old in 1991 on the cover of Nirvana’s “Nevermind” album is suing the band and others, alleging the image is child pornography they have profited from.

The lawsuit, filed by Spencer Elden on Tuesday in federal court in California, alleges that Nirvana and the record labels behind “Nevermind” “intentionally commercially marketed Spencer’s child pornography and leveraged the shocking nature of his image to promote themselves and their music at his expense.”

The lawsuit says Elden has suffered “lifelong damages” from the ubiquitous image of him naked underwater appearing to swim after a dollar bill on a fish hook.

It seeks at least $150,000 from each of more than a dozen defendants, including the Kurt Cobain estate, surviving Nirvana members Krist Novoselic and Dave Grohl and Geffen Records.

Elden is filing the lawsuit now because he “finally has the courage to hold these actors accountable,” one of his attorneys, Maggie Mabie, told The Associated Press Wednesday.

Mabie said despite the photo being 30 years old, the lawsuit is within the statute of limitations of federal child pornography law for several reasons, including the fact that the image is still in circulation and earning money.

Elden also wants any new versions of the album altered.

“If there is a 30th anniversary re-release, he wants for the entire world not to see his genitals,” Mabie said.

When the cover was shot, Nirvana was a little-known grunge band with no sense they were making a generation-defining album in “Nevermind,” their first major label release, whose songs included “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” “Come as You Are” and “Lithium.”

Elden’s father was a friend of the photographer, Kirk Weddle, who took pictures of several swimming babies in several scenarios at the Rose Bowl Aquatic Center in Pasadena, California.

“Cobain chose the image depicting Spencer — like a sex worker — grabbing for a dollar bill that is positioned dangling from a fishhook in front of his nude body with his penis explicitly displayed,” the lawsuit says.

Elden has recreated the image several times, always with clothes or swim trunks on, for anniversaries of the album’s release, and he has expressed mixed feelings about it in interviews that have grown increasingly negative over the years.