Indiana
Man gets 65-year sentence for son’s murder, abuse
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. (AP) — An Indiana man has been sentenced to 65 years in prison for abusing his 12-year-old son and starving the boy to death.
Monroe Circuit Judge Christine Talley Haseman said Friday that nothing could justify the physical abuse and withholding of food and water that Luis Eduardo Posso Jr. inflicted on his young child.
Before issuing her decision, Haseman detailed the brutal treatment that Eduardo Posso endured and showed photographs of the boy taken just a few years apart.
By the time of his death in 2019, Eduardo was the size of a typical 4-year-old and had been punched, slapped, kicked, shocked with a dog collar and chained up by his father and stepmother, Haseman said.
Posso’s behavior was “incomprehensible, heinous and cruel,” she said.
Posso pleaded guilty to murder in June and prosecutors agreed not to seek life in prison without parole, along with dismissing charges of neglect, criminal confinement and battery.
His wife, Dayana Medina-Flores, pleaded guilty to murder and received the same sentence in 2021 tied to her stepson’s death.
The Herald-Times reports that people sentenced to the maximum 65-year prison sentence for murder in Indiana typically serve three-fourths of their sentence — about 49 years.
Posso’s attorney, public defender Kyle Duffer, said he will appeal the judge’s sentence.
California
Doctor admits illegally prescribing 120,000 opioid pills
SANTA ANA, Calif. (AP) — A Southern California doctor has pleaded guilty to writing prescriptions for more than 120,000 opioid pills over a six-year span, including to an impaired driver who struck and killed a bicyclist, federal prosecutors said.
In his plea agreement, Dr. Dzung Ahn Pham of Tustin admitted distributing the pills without a legitimate medical purpose in exchange for cash and insurance payments. He pleaded guilty Friday to conspiracy to distribute controlled substances, the Orange County Register reported.
Pham faces up to 20 years in federal prison when he is sentenced on Jan. 6, 2023, the newspaper said.
From Jan. 1, 2013 and Dec. 17, 2018, Pham wrote prescriptions for around 53,000 Oxycodone pills, 68,000 hydrocodone pills and 29,000 pills of amphetamine salts using 18 different patient names, according to his plea agreement.
Pham’s record of prescribing large amounts of pills led a CVS pharmacy to stop accepting prescriptions from him when he couldn’t justify the number of pills patients were picking up, prosecutors said when charges were filed in 2018.
Pham conspired with Jennifer Thaoyen Nguyen, 51, a licensed pharmacist who also has agreed to enter a guilty plea for the same felony charge later this month, court records show.
Pham directed his patients to Nguyen’s pharmacy to fill his prescriptions because he knew other pharmacies would not, according to court documents.
A man who fatally struck an off-duty firefighter training on his bike for a triathlon told investigators he was on drugs prescribed by Pham, prosecutors said. Several prescription bottles with Pham’s name were found in the driver’s car.
Stephen Scarpa was convicted of second-degree murder in the death of Costa Mesa fire Capt. Mike Kreza. Pham was not charged in the death.
Washington
Prosecutors seek prison for rioter’s attack on AP journalist
Federal prosecutors on Sunday recommended a prison sentence of approximately four years for a Pennsylvania man who pleaded guilty to assaulting an Associated Press photographer and using a stun gun against police officers during a mob’s attack on the U.S. Capitol.
U.S. District Judge Randolph Moss is scheduled to sentence Alan Byerly on Oct. 21 for his attack on AP photographer John Minchillo and police during the Jan. 6, 2021, riot in Washington.
Sentencing guidelines recommend a prison term ranging from 37 to 46 months. Prosecutors are seeking a sentence of at least 46 months of imprisonment, followed by three years of supervised release. Byerly’s attorney has until Friday to submit a sentencing recommendation.
The judge isn’t bound by any of the sentencing recommendations.
Byerly was arrested in July 2021 and pleaded guilty a year later to assault charges.
Byerly purchased a stun gun before he traveled from his home in Fleetwood, Pennsylvania, to Washington for the “Stop the Steal” rally on Jan. 6. Leaving the rally before then-President Donald Trump finished speaking, Byerly went to the Capitol and joined other rioters in using a large metal Trump sign as a battering ram against barricades and police officers, prosecutors said.
After that, he went to the Capitol’s Lower West Terrace, where he and other rioters attacked Minchillo, who was wearing a lanyard with AP lettering. Byerly is one of at least three people charged with assaulting Minchillo, whose assault was captured on video by a colleague.
Byerly then approached police officers behind bike racks and deployed his stun gun.
“After officers successfully removed the stun gun from Byerly’s hands, Byerly continued to charge toward the officers, struck and pushed them, and grabbed an officer’s baton,” prosecutors wrote.
Byerly later told FBI agents that he did just “one stupid thing down there and that’s all it was,” according to prosecutors.
“This was a reference to how he handled the reporter and nothing more,” they wrote.
Byerly treated Jan. 6 “as a normal, crime-free day, akin to the movie, ‘The Purge,’ when he could do whatever he wanted without judgment or legal consequence,” prosecutors said.
“He was mistaken,” they added.
More than 100 police officers were injured during the Capitol siege.
Approximately 900 people have been charged with federal crimes for their conduct on Jan. 6. More than 400 of them have pleaded guilty, mostly to misdemeanor offenses. Over 280 riot defendants have been sentenced, with roughly half sentenced to terms of imprisonment ranging from one week to 10 years.
New Jersey
Judge: Jury in wife slaying won’t be told about earlier case
TRENTON, N.J. (AP) — A judge has decided that jurors who are asked to decide whether a man killed his wife in New Jersey will not be told that he was convicted earlier of having killed his first wife in Ohio.
NJ.com reports that the decision last week by Judge Peter Warshaw is a significant blow to Mercer County prosecutors trying to convict 71-year-old John David Smith III of having killed 49-year-old Fran Gladden-Smith in 1991 when they lived in West Windsor. Her body has never been found, but a grand jury indicted Smith in 2019.
At that time, Smith was in prison in Ohio for killing 23-year-old Janice Hartman decades earlier. Prosecutors alleged that he killed Hartman days after their five-year marriage ended in 1974 and kept her body in a box for a few years before dumping it on a rural Indiana road, where it was found in 1980.
Despite any similarities between the two cases, Warshaw ruled that telling jurors about the Ohio conviction would unduly prejudice them against the defendant in the New Jersey case. Despite any jury instruction from the judge, a panel would “struggle” against thinking that the defendant must have acted similarly in the two cases, he said.
“Simply stated, that the defendant killed his first wife in 1974 does not prove he killed his second in 1991,” Warshaw said.
Warshaw gave a lengthy summary of the investigations of Smith and cited what he called “gaps” in the Mercer County prosecution’s case, saying there is no body and therefore no cause of death and also no eyewitnesses. He said prosecutors could seek later to present basic facts, such as the defendant’s previous marriage.
Smith reported his wife missing to West Windsor police in October 2019, saying she had left a note a week earlier that said, “Going away for a few days. Don’t forget to feed the fish.” But police found a suitcase he said she had taken with her and her relatives expressed doubts about a trip because she was recovering from hip surgery at the time.
Smith is serving a 15-year to life sentence in Ohio in Hartman’s murder and will next be eligible for parole in 2029. A year ago, a prosecutor said in court that the defendant had been offered a 20-year term to run consecutive to the Ohio term. Defense attorney Jamie Hubert said at the time that her client had not outright rejected the offer nor made a counteroffer; a message seeking comment was sent to her Sunday.
New Jersey
Man gets life term in murder of woman whose remains were dismembered
LAWRENCE, N.J. (AP) — A man convicted of first-degree murder in the death of a woman whose remains were found dismembered and set on fire at a South Jersey farm four years ago has been sentenced to life in prison.
The Cumberland County prosecutor’s office said 57-year-old Dennis Parrish will be ineligible for parole for more than 63 years following Friday’s first-degree murder sentence in the July 2018 death of 32-year-old Tonya Cook.
Authorities said Parrish killed Cook at his home before dismembering her body and setting her remains on fire in a field in Lawrence Township. A moving company box found with the remains was traced back to the defendant, and his blood was found in the victim’s home and his DNA under her fingernails, authorities said.
At trial, the defense argued that someone else murdered the victim, although defense attorney Alex Varghese said his client acknowledged having disposed of the body.
Prosecutors said Parrish was also sentenced to a consecutive 10-year prison term for desecration of human remains. A county jury in August also convicted him of hindering prosecution, obstruction and evidence-tampering.
Shortly after the killing, at least a hundred people gathered for a vigil to remember Cook at the field where her remains were found, NJ.com reported.
“The Cook family and the world lost a beautiful soul with the death of Tonya Marie Cook,” a family spokeswoman said at the time alongside Cook’s mother, Faye. “As a mother, Faye has felt the kind of pain that no mother should ever have to feel.”
California
Ex-county official to plead guilty in cannabis bribe scheme
SAN BERNARDINO, Calif. (AP) — A former county official in Southern California will admit he funneled bribes through his company to a city councilman in exchange for the councilman’s votes and influence in the city’s cannabis permitting process, federal prosecutors said.
Gabriel Chavez, a former San Bernardino County planning commissioner, has agreed to plead guilty to one count of bribery, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said.
The politician who solicited the bribes – former Baldwin Park City Councilmember Ricardo Pacheco – pleaded guilty in June 2021 to a federal bribery charge. Pacheco resigned from the council last year and is awaiting sentencing.
After Baldwin Park began permitting legal cannabis shops in 2017, Pacheco began to solicit bribes from marijuana businesses seeking city permits, according to Chavez’s plea agreement.
Chavez agreed to act as an intermediary to funnel those bribes to Pacheco by using his Claremont-based internet marketing company, Market Share Media Agency, prosecutors said.
The pair agreed that Pacheco would get 60% of the companies’ bribe money while Chavez would keep the rest as payment primarily for facilitating the bribes, according to court documents.
Chavez stepped down from the San Bernardino County Planning Commission in November 2018 after the FBI executed a search warrant at his home.
Chavez is expected to enter the guilty plea in the coming weeks. A federal bribery charge typically calls for a maximum sentence of 10 years imprisonment.
