Texas
Sentencing trial begins for ex-coach in wife’s 1999 death
HOUSTON (AP) — The sentencing trial began Monday for a former Houston-area high school football coach convicted twice of fatally shooting his pregnant wife during what authorities say was a staged burglary more than 24 years ago.
David Mark Temple, 54, was convicted in August 2019 for a second time for killing of his wife, Belinda. But that jury could not decide on a sentence, prompting a judge to declare a mistrial. Prosecutors had sought a life prison term.
A new resentencing trial for David Temple, who is being held in the Harris County Jail, was delayed in part by the coronavirus pandemic.
Authorities said Belinda Temple, 30, was fatally shot in her home on Jan. 11, 1999, in what was initially believed to be a burglary.
Prosecutors later accused David Temple of staging the burglary at his suburban Houston home and fatally shooting his wife, a high school teacher who was eight months pregnant, because he was having an affair. David Temple later married the woman he’d been seeing. He had been a football coach at Alief Hastings High School and wasn’t charged in the killing until five years after it happened.
“He has been found guilty of it. So, the whether (he did it) has been resolved. Now ... what are you going to do about it?” Lisa Tanner, a special prosecutor with the Texas Attorney General’s Office, told jurors during opening statements on Monday.
But Stanley Schneider, one of David Temple’s attorneys, suggested to jurors his client’s guilt had not been settled and that he planned to “explore some of the police investigation.”
“He told the police he didn’t kill his wife. He said that on Jan. 11, 1999, and he said that continuously since that time,” Schneider said.
A jury initially convicted David Temple of murder in 2007, but Texas’ top criminal court overturned that conviction in 2016 because prosecutors had withheld evidence.
After the conviction was overturned, the special prosecutors were assigned when the Harris County District Attorney’s Office recused itself over a conflict of interest.
David Temple’s second wife filed for divorce in the middle of his retrial in 2019.
Defense attorneys have argued a teenager who lived in the Temples’ neighborhood was the killer.
Kansas
Man sentenced in Capitol riot ‘ridiculously ashamed’
WASHINGTON (AP) — A Kansas City, Kansas, man said he was “ridiculously ashamed” before he was sentenced Monday to four months of incarceration for joining a mob’s attack on the U.S. Capitol.
U.S. District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan also ordered 48-year-old Kasey Hopkins to pay $500 restitution in a video conference hearing. His incarceration will be followed by 24 months of probation, The Kansas City Star reports.
Hopkins acknowledged during the hearing that he was sent to prison in 2002 for a rape conviction. He said that after getting out, he tried to make amends and started a business.
But on Jan. 6, 2021, Hopkins breached the Capitol twice and entered a senator’s private office, where he took pictures of rioters ransacking the room.
“I’m ridiculously ashamed to be here right now,” he said, adding that “the mob mentality is a very, very real thing.”
Chutkan praised Hopkins for undergoing “personal transformation,” but she said his involvement in the riot “boggled my mind.” Court documents said that Hopkins proposed “forming a group of ‘Proud Felons for Trump’ when he heard the Proud Boys might not accept men with felony convictions.”
Hopkins initially was charged with four misdemeanors, but prosecutors dropped three of them in exchange for him pleading guilty to parading, demonstrating or picketing in a Capitol building.
About 1,000 people have been charged with federal crimes in the riot that temporarily halted the certification of President Joe Biden’s victory and left dozens of police officers injured.
New York
Trump due for questioning in AG’s fraud lawsuit
NEW YORK (AP) — Donald Trump is scheduled to return to New York for a deposition Thursday in a business fraud lawsuit filed against him and his company by the state’s attorney general, according to a person familiar with the matter.
It will be the former president’s first trip to New York City since his arraignment last week on felony charges in a separate criminal case involving hush-money payments made during the 2016 campaign to bury claims of extramarital sexual encounters that Trump says never happened.
Trump is expected to face questioning at New York Attorney General Letitia James’ office in lower Manhattan, according to the person, who was not authorized to speak publicly about the matter and did so on condition of anonymity.
Trump previously sat for a deposition at James’ office last August, just weeks before she filed the lawsuit. That time, Trump declined to answer questions, invoking his Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination more than 400 times.
Trump said he did so because he believed the investigation was part of a “politically motivated Witch Hunt.”
Messages seeking comment were left with Trump’s lawyers and the state attorney general’s office. A Trump spokesperson did not immediately respond to questions Monday evening about his plans.
James’ lawsuit alleges Trump and his company, the Trump Organization, misled banks and others, in part by providing them with annual financial statements that misstated the value of prized assets, including golf courses and hotels bearing his name.
James, a Democrat, is seeking $250 million and a ban on Trump, a Republican, doing business in the state.
The judge in the case, Arthur Engoron, remains committed to a Oct. 2 trial date, but agreed recently to move some pretrial deadlines to allow lawyers more time to review evidence, interview witnesses and file motions. Trump’s deposition is part of that process.
Engoron has scheduled a hearing for April 21 to resolve a dispute over the scheduling of a deposition for Trump’s former lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen.
“This case is complex, but it is not complicated. Essentially, it all boils down to whether (Trump’s) statements of financial interest are true or false,” Engoron said at a March 21 hearing.
This week’s deposition and the ongoing civil and criminal cases aren’t the only legal troubles Trump is facing in New York.
A federal judge on Monday issued an order asking if Trump plans to attend a trial this month in a civil lawsuit resulting from columnist E. Jean Carroll’s claims that he raped her in a department store dressing room in the 1990s. The trial is scheduled to start April 25 in Manhattan federal court.
Missouri
Family of man who died canoeing sue, blaming dangerous dam
CHESTERFIELD, Mo. (AP) — The family of a man who drowned on a canoe trip is suing two state agencies, alleging a dangerous dam was to blame.
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports that Caleb Gage, of Ballwin, was 32 last May when his boat capsized near the St. Louis suburb of Chesterfield. His friend survived.
The suit, filed on behalf of his parents and young daughter, faults the Missouri Department of Conservation and the Missouri Department of Natural Resources. Both state departments are tasked with maintaining the Centaur Chute, a waterway that branches off the Missouri River along the Howell Island Conservation Area.
The suit said the low-head dam near where he capsized was in disrepair and the state failed to remove access to the chute or warn boaters of the unsafe conditions.
Low-head dams are known as “drowning machines” because they spawn powerful hydraulics that tend to catch objects, or people, that go over them. It can be a long time before whatever is caught works its way free.
Representatives from both state agencies declined to comment on the allegations in the pending litigation.
Delaware
Court upholds convictions of trucker in fatal highway crash
DOVER, Del. (AP) — Delaware’s Supreme Court has affirmed convictions for criminally negligent homicide against a North Carolina truck driver whose tractor-trailer plowed into several vehicles on Interstate 95 in Wilmington in 2019, leaving two people dead.
Brian Keith Winningham, 43, of Fairmont, North Carolina, was convicted after a bench trial of homicide, vehicular assault and inattentive driving. He was sentenced last year to 23 years in prison, but the sentence was suspended for four months behind bars and probation.
A public defender for Winningham argued on appeal that the homicide convictions should be overturned because his only driving infraction was briefly diverting his attention from the roadway. Winningham also argued that the trial judge erred in finding that he failed to perceive a risk of “death or serious physical injury,” when criminally negligent homicide requires proof of a failure to perceive a risk of death.
The Supreme Court affirmed the convictions Monday, citing evidence indicating that Winningham had diverted his attention from the road for at least four seconds while driving at highway speed.
“A rational trier of fact could find that, under the circumstances, Winningham’s inattention was prolonged enough that it was a gross deviation from the standard of care that a reasonable person would observe,” wrote Chief Justice Collins J. Seitz Jr.
Winningham’s truck barreled into a line of traffic that was backed up in the travel lane waiting to exit the highway. The tractor-trailer crashed into three stopped cars, killing a 9-year-old girl and a 61-year-old man. One of two other victims who were injured was left paralyzed.
According to Monday’s ruling, the tractor-trailer’s dash camera showed that Winningham was traveling “in a hurried manner,” and had passed at least seven other tractor-trailers in a 20-minute span between when he started driving and the time of the crash.
“Even though the lane to his left and the improved shoulder to his right were empty, he did not attempt to avoid the line of cars before the crash. The stopped traffic was visible in the dashcam video at least four seconds before the collision,” the court noted.
The ruling came just three days after a tractor-trailer driver in southern Delaware ran a stop sign and hit a van, killing a 59-year-old Maryland man and leaving a 67-year-old woman critically injured. The driver of the tractor-trailer, a 26-year-old man from Richmond, Virginia, was not injured.
Wisconsin
Milwaukee landlord ordered to pay $1.35M for fatal fire
MILWAUKEE (AP) — A landlord has been ordered to pay $1.35 million for a fire that killed two people in Milwaukee in 2019, a newspaper reported.
Will Sherard has shown a “reckless disregard” for the condition of his properties, Milwaukee County Judge William Sosnay said in a March 31 decision.
The fire began in wiring behind walls. Clarence Murrell Jr., 60, and Patricia Colston, 53, died.
The lawsuit was filed by Murrell’s adult children, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported Monday.
The newspaper said the financial award was a rare step in a Milwaukee housing case. Sherard hasn’t talked publicly about the lawsuit.
“We are sending a message to all predatory landlords that our community will no longer tolerate unsafe and substandard housing. The lives of people you rent to matter,” said attorney Justin Padway, who represents Murrell’s family.
In 2021, the Journal Sentinel found electrical fires hit Black renters in distressed neighborhoods the hardest. The newspaper’s work was recognized as a Pulitzer Prize finalist.
