July, 2006 News
Problems linger at Hawaii youth prison
Associated Press
31 Jul 2006 6:47 pm
Hawaii is in "partial compliance'' with an agreement requiring the state to correct serious problems at its Youth Correctional Facility.
That's according to an 85-page report by special monitor Russell Van Vleet.
The report released Friday is the first since Vleet was hired to oversee the implementation of the agreement reached in February between the state and U-S Department of Justice.
The agreement has 53 provisions separated into five categories including: protection from harm, training, access to medical and mental health care, special education and quality improvement.
CONVICTED IDAHO SEX OFFENDER SHOOTS SELF ON LEWISTON HILL
Associated Press
31 Jul 2006 12:00 am
A Lewiston man convicted Friday of ten felony charges of sexual abuse and sexual battery -- but released after the court hearing by the judge -- is in serious condition after he shot himself in the head.
Harold E- Grist Junior is in Saint Joseph Regional Medical Center after he shot himself at the top of the Lewiston hill late Friday night. Before the shooting, the 47-year-old was convicted on charges of repeatedly molesting the daughter of a former live-in girlfriend.
Trapped in despair
Lee Williams
30 Jul 2006 12:00 am
Wilmington Housing Authority buildings are crawling with crime, drugs and prostitutes. The executive director knows it. The mayor knows it. Lawmakers know it. But the problems persist.
The Wilmington Housing Authority uses untrained, unlicensed and uninsured workers from temporary employment agencies to safeguard the thousands of vulnerable residents, including the elderly and handicapped, in its six high-rises -- a practice residents say isn't working, and state police say is illegal.
Some of the workers, called monitors, have criminal records. Three years after one monitor pleaded guilty to unlawful sexual contact, he was working in the high-rises under the supervision of his uncle -- WHA's security chief James Berrien.
From the street, the WHA high-rises appear well maintained, but like a Potemkin village, all is not as it seems, a News Journal investigation found.
Inside, the residents often live in fear, clinging to their dignity. They are black, white and Latino. One thing they have in common is being poor.
Protecting Hawaii Visitors From Crime
28 Jul 2006 10:19 pm
Imagine going on vacation and winding up a victim of a horrible crime.
Rape and robbery are just some of the topics being discussed at this year's Visitor Crime Awareness Conference.
Hundreds from around nation gathered at the Hawaii Convention Center today to talk about how to keep tourists safe in paradise.
Former police officer sentenced for porn, sex charges
Associated Press
28 Jul 2006 7:16 am
A former King City police officer will serve four years in federal prison after pleading guilty to child pornography and sex charges.
Thirty-year-old Brandon Tomkins resigned from the police force last August as the city was beginning an administrative review.
Prosecutors say Tomkins gained the trust of a 15-year-old Aloha boy he met on the Internet. After months of exchanging e-mails and talking on the phone, Tomkins met the boy, who had turned 16, to have sex.
The boy is a special education student with a learning disability and told a school counselor the next day.
Tomkins must also serve five years on probation and register as a sex offender for life.
Is it time to limit the sex-offender registry?
28 Jul 2006 12:00 am
The goals of this country's criminal justice system are to achieve justice, reduce crime and provide equal protection to those subject to the system. As lawmakers consider changes in Maine's sex-offender registry law, they would do well to keep those goals in mind. Placing the names, photographs, and home and work addresses of certain convicted sex-offenders' on the state's Web site has real public safety benefits. But while the pressure is understandably strong to maintain as comprehensive a list as possible in order to reduce potential crimes against the innocent, the rights of those already punished for their crimes -- as well as the severity of those crimes -- must also be taken into consideration.
The Legislature's Joint Standing Committee on Criminal Justice and Public Safety is conducting a review of the sex-offender registry, in part, because of a tragic event this past spring.
We recognize that alerting residents that there is a sexual predator in their midst who is statistically likely to offend again may serve the public interest by making residents more vigilant about their safety; it serves little interest to go out of our way to alert residents that there's someone in their midst who does not pose a comparable risk.
AG touts N.D.'s sex offender site
Dale Wetzel
28 Jul 2006 12:00 am
North Dakotans who want to know if a dangerous sex offender lives nearby now may check instantly, using a state Web site that now displays maps of their addresses, Attorney General Wayne Stenehjem said.
Stenehjem said recent improvements to the site, which began operating in November 2001, allows users to search for sex offenders by address, age and physical description. Visitors may call up detailed maps to see if an offender lives near their home, or their child's school.
The new mapping feature shows only the sex offenders who are considered at high risk of committing more crimes, and those whose sex crime convictions require them to register with local authorities for the rest of their lives.
Web database of molesters becomes law
Associated Press
27 Jul 2006 10:01 pm
President Bush, joined by "America's Most Wanted" host John Walsh, signed a new law Thursday that requires convicted child molesters to be listed on a national Internet database and face a felony charge for failing to update their whereabouts.
The measure was named for Walsh's 6-year-old son, Adam, who was abducted exactly 25 years ago Thursday, and subsequently murdered.
It aims to help police find more than 100,000 sex offenders by creating the first national online listing available to the public and searchable by ZIP code. It also called for harsh federal punishment for sexually assaulting children, including the possibility of the death penalty when a victim is murdered.
Sen. John Kerry, D-Massachusetts, said the measure the president signed into law closes loopholes in current child Internet pornography laws. Kerry and co-sponsor Sen. Johnny Isakson, R-Georgia, pushed to include what they dubbed "Masha's Law" into the legislation Bush signed.
Now 13, Masha Allen was adopted from a Russian orphanage at age 5 by a man who sexually abused her. Her abuser was convicted, yet her images on the Internet are being downloaded around the world.
"It's an absolute outrage that the penalty for downloading songs illegally off the Internet was three times the penalty for downloading disgusting images of children," Kerry said. "We need to do everything we can to end the disgrace of child pornography. This is a start."
The new law dramatically increases penalties for anyone who downloads child pornography off the Internet, raising the civil penalties from $50,000 to $150,000. It will also change existing law to allow victims ages 18 or older to recover damages from those who downloaded images of them taken while they were children.
Colorado man says he commited 48 murders
JON SARCHE
27 Jul 2006 7:49 pm
A man serving a life sentence in Colorado for murdering a teenage girl has claimed responsibility for as many as 48 slayings across the country dating back more than three decades, authorities said Thursday.
Robert Charles Browne, 53, told authorities the slayings occurred from 1970 until his arrest in 1995. He was in court Thursday to plead guilty to one of those killings — the death of another girl in Colorado in 1987.
Browne pleaded guilty in 1995 to kidnapping and murder in the 1991 death of Heather Dawn Church, 13, of Black Forest, a town north of Colorado Springs. He was sentenced to life without parole. On Thursday, he pleaded guilty to first-degree murder in the death of Rocio Sperry, a girl who was about 15 at the time of her death 19 years ago.
The confession came after several years of correspondence and discussion between the killer and cold-case volunteer investigators, authorities said. Browne himself sent the first letter in "cryptic and poetic prose" in March 2000 to El Paso County prosecutors, officials said.
"Seven sacred virgins, entombed side by side, those less worthy, are scattered wide," the letter says. "The score is you 1, the other team 48. If you were to drive to the end zone in a white Trans Am, the score could be 9 to 48. That would complete your home court sphere."
Neighbor charged in death of Utah girl
PAUL FOY
27 Jul 2006 4:47 pm
Prosecutors on Thursday charged a man with kidnapping and aggravated murder in the death of a 5-year-old girl, saying he confessed to smothering the girl, then sexually assaulting her — a crime that could bring the death penalty.
Destiny Norton had been missing for eight days when police found her body Monday night stuffed in a plastic storage box in a cellar at the man's house just two doors away, prosecutor Bob Stott said at a news conference to announce the charges Thursday.
The neighbor, Craig Roger Gregerson, 20, will be appointed a defense lawyer at a court appearance scheduled for Friday, he said.
Authorities added a few details about the girl's disappearance and why police couldn't find her body the first time they searched Gregerson's tiny row house unit. The final search came after Gregerson confessed to killing the girl and directed police to a storage container hidden in a "tight, confined basement with a lot of material down there," Stott said.
Destiny's family reported her missing the night of July 16. Police and volunteers searched the city and nearby canyons for eight days before her girl's body was found.
Threats against federal judges on record pace
Associated Press
27 Jul 2006 9:46 am
Threats against federal judges are on a record-setting pace this year, nearly 18 months after the family of a federal judge was killed in Chicago.
U.S. Marshals, who protect the nation’s 2,200 federal judges, believe they averted another potential tragedy in the Midwest last year when they helped block the release of a prison inmate who told a judge in a series of sexually charged letters that he was going to take her away.
Threats and inappropriate communications have quadrupled over 10 years ago. There were 201 reported such incidents in the 1996 government spending year and 943 in the year that ended Sept. 30, the Marshals Service said.
The most notable change that grew out of last year’s killings was the decision by Congress to set aside $12 million to install security systems in judges’ homes.
About 1,700 judges have asked for the home alarms. Fewer than a third of those, about 500, have received them, Horton said.
Sex offender residency laws pushing some to campgrounds
25 Jul 2006 12:00 am
Iowa's laws restricting where sex offenders can live are causing some of them to reside at campgrounds around the state.
"Its not uncommon," Linn County Sheriff Don Zeller said. "Weve had them in all of the county parks and some of the state parks."
Information about sex offenders at campgrounds has been forwarded to the Iowa State Association of Counties for consideration as a legislative priority.
Linn County Supervisor Linda Langston said a more specific sex offender classification system would help them re-enter society.
She said that a clearer system would distinguish between "true pedophiles" and young men who made a mistake with a younger girlfriend.
Man sentenced for sex crimes
25 Jul 2006 12:00 am
A 33-year-old rural Pierre man was sentenced Monday to 30 years in prison after pleading guilty to rape and sexual contact.
Leo Jackson was given the maximum sentence of 15 years each for one count of third-degree rape and one count of sexual contact with a person under 16.
In court, Jackson apologized to the victim and her family. “I know what I did was wrong. There was no excuse,” he said.
Sex crimes suspect waives 180-day right
25 Jul 2006 12:00 am
A Rapid City man charged with 10 counts of sex crimes against children waived his right to have a trial within 180 days to allow his attorney more time to interview witnesses.
He was indicted in June by a Pennington County grand jury on five counts of criminal pedophilia.
Criminal pedophilia is defined as sexual penetration with a child younger than 13 if the perpetrator is older than 26.
For each of the five counts of criminal pedophilia, Onken is also charged with an alternate count of having sexual contact with someone younger than 16 and being at least three years older.
An alternate count means he cannot be convicted of both crimes.
Site does not list sex-offender threat
25 Jul 2006 12:00 am
South Dakotans can check the state's new Internet registry of sex offenders for a list of all transgressors. What they won't find is any information about each criminal's threat level.
Unlike other states, South Dakota does not determine whether a sex offender is a serious threat or someone with a 30-year-long clean slate.
"We have no classification system here," said Sioux Falls Police Detective Arden Goering, who maintains the city's sex-offender registration program. "I've got one guy on my list whose conviction dates to 1949, and he gets treated the same as three-time offenders."
As warrant is served, suspect shoots himself
25 Jul 2006 12:00 am
A wanted sex offender was declared brain dead Monday after shooting himself in the head while being served with an arrest warrant.
Johnson County sheriff’s deputies and the FBI’s dangerous-crimes unit were serving the warrant on Joey Carlton Ruttman, 29, at a home in the 16500 block of Metcalf Avenue in Stilwell.
As officers spoke with Ruttman’s father, they heard a noise. They entered the home and found Ruttman in the bathroom with a gunshot wound to his head. He was flown by helicopter to Overland Park Regional Medical Center. Johnson County Sheriff’s Deputy Tom Erickson said doctors told police that Ruttman was pronounced brain dead at 5 p.m.
US 'worst' for online child abuse
BBC
20 Jul 2006 7:28 am
More than 50% of online images of child abuse reported to an internet watchdog can be traced to the US, a report says.
Investigations by the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) found nearly 2,500 US sites containing illegal images.
The IWF study also said that some sites that contain the illegal content remain accessible for up to five years despite being reported to relevant authorities.
Miss. high court refuses to hear Chickasaw County man's rape sentence appeal
Associated Press
20 Jul 2006 12:00 am
The Mississippi Supreme Court refused Thursday to hear the appeal of a Chickasaw County man sentenced to 75 years in prison for raping a Lee County woman.
Barry Stephan Townsend was convicted of rape and two counts of sexual battery by a Lee County jury in 2004.
The state Court of Appeals upheld his conviction last year.
Townsend was sentenced to 35 years on the rape conviction and 30 years on each of the sexual battery convictions. The sentences were to run consecutively, with 20 years suspended.
Townsend, of Houlka, did not testify at his trial.
However, at a sentencing hearing, Townsend repeatedly claimed the victim agreed to have sex with him in exchange for drugs, according to the court record.
Prosecutors said the adult victim was held against her will for more than 12 hours during August 2002.
Sex offenders fail to register
Tina Shelton
20 Jul 2006 12:00 am
Hundreds of convicted sex offenders in Hawaii have failed to keep records meant to protect the public up-to-date.
The State Attorney General's office is threatening to send those convicts back to prison. And in some cases, they already have. Six of nine offenders the state indicted last December are heading for trial, and one's back in jail.
Most of us think of the website, at sexoffenders.hawaii.gov, when we hear about the state's sex offender registry. In over a year, it's logged more than six million hits, as people log-in to learn whether someone they know, or someone on their street, is a convicted sex offender.
But the registry helps police investigating new crimes, too.
