Today is
Saturday November 23, 2024
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HUNTSVILLE (AP) — The Texas Supreme Court halted Thursday night’s scheduled execution of a man who would have become the first person in the U.S. put to death for a murder conviction tied to a diagnosis of shaken baby syndrome.
The late-night ruling to spare for now the life of Robert Roberson, who was convicted of killing his 2-year-old daughter in 2002, capped a flurry of last-ditch legal challenges and weeks of public pressure from both Republican and Democratic lawmakers who say he is innocent and was sent to death row based on flawed science.
In the hours leading up to the ruling, Roberson had been confined to a prison holding cell a few feet from America’s busiest death chamber at the Walls Unit in Hunstville, waiting for certainty over whether he would be taken to die by lethal injection.
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PALESTINE – A district court will not throw out the execution warrant for Robert Roberson III, an East Texas man on death row accused of killing his daughter. According to our news partner KETK, Roberson, a Palestine native, was convicted of killing his 2-year-old daughter Nikki in 2002 and sentenced to death. He has maintained his innocence while on death row for the past 20 years, with an execution date scheduled for Oct. 17.
The defense’s motion to vacate Roberson’s execution warrant was denied by Judge Alfonso Charles, who is the Presiding Judge of the Tenth Administrative Judicial Region, on Tuesday. Charles was also asked to decide whether to remove the previous now-retired judge, Deborah Oakes Evans, from the case. He denied both the motion to recuse the execution warrant and the motion to vacate Judge Evans from the case.
Roberson attended court remotely via Zoom from the Polunsky Unit in Livingston where death row inmates are housed. Arguments were heard in front of a full courtroom of reporters of spectators.
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SMITH COUNTY – Smith County donated surplus computer equipment to Mustard Seed Ministries that will be refurbished and given to local school children. Dr. Karen Jones, founder and president of Mustard Seed Ministries, received the donation from the Smith County Information Technology Department on Monday, October 14. Items included 178 desktops, 110 laptops, 70 monitors, 12 printers, five servers, seven scanners, and three switches. The donation was approved earlier in Commissioners Court.
For years, Smith County has donated outdated and broken computer equipment to Mustard Seed Ministries. The nonprofit organization dismantles and reassembles the equipment and donates them to school children who do not have computers. Mustard Seed supplies schools in Tyler, Whitehouse and Mineola.
Mustard Seed Ministries, is a nonprofit organization of the United Methodist Church. For more information, visit http://www.mustardseedcomputers.com.
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UPDATE: The Longview Police Department said Thomas has been found as of 4:31 p.m. Previous story: LONGVIEW — The Longview Police Department have issued a missing person alert for a 27-year-old woman. According to our news partner KETK, missing is Allison Thomas. She is described as 5 foot and 2 inches tall, around 130 pounds with brown hair and brown eyes. Allison was reportedly last seen wearing a black top and jean shorts. She also has a tattoo of a red and blue feather on her upper left arm.
Allison was last seen around East Marshall Avenue, near Christus Good Shepherd Medical Center. Anyone with information regarding her whereabouts is asked to contact Longview Police at 903-237-1199.
TEXARKANA, Ark. (AP) — Three teen-aged boys have been arrested after a group of juveniles were accused of taking over a section of a hospital in Texarkana, authorities said.
The Texarkana Arkansas Police Department responded Sunday to an emergency call from the Riverview Behavioral Hospital where several patients, described as unruly, had begun a riot and taken over a part of the facility.
“Dispatch was advised the patients had gained control of a piece of metal and were using it to break out interior windows in an apparent effort to escape the facility,†the department said in a news release.
When several officers from the TAPD and other agencies arrived, they found that several staff members were trapped inside a nurse’s station, surrounded by the unruly patients, police said.
After developing a plan to evacuate the staff and secure the patients, officers wearing riot gear entered the facility and were able to “successfully separate all parties involved and de-escalate the situation without any major injuries to the patients, staff or officers,†police said.
A 17-year-old boy and two 15-year-old boys were arrested and now face a charge of inciting a riot. They were transported to a juvenile detention facility while the other juveniles involved were remanded back into custody of the hospital, police said.
TAPD Capt. Zach White told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette that about 25 juvenile patients were involved in the disruption.
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AUSTIN (AP) — A Texas man who sued his ex-wife’s friends for helping her obtain an abortion informed the court that the two sides reached a settlement, forgoing the need for a trial that would have tested his argument that their actions amounted to assisting in a wrongful death.
Attorneys for Marcus Silva and the three women he sued last year filed court papers this week stating they had reached an agreement. As of Friday, the judge hadn’t yet signed off on the settlement. Court records didn’t include its terms, but a spokesperson for the defendants said the settlement didn’t involve any financial terms.
“While we are grateful that this fraudulent case is finally over, we are angry for ourselves and others who have been terrorized for the simple act of supporting a friend who is facing abuse,” Jackie Noyola, one of the women, said in a statement. “No one should ever have to fear punishment, criminalization, or a lengthy court battle for helping someone they care about.â€
Abortion rights advocates worried that the case could establish new avenues for recourse against people who help women obtain abortions and create a chilling effect in Texas and across the country.
Silva filed a petition last year to sue the friends of his ex-wife, Brittni Silva, for providing her with abortion pills. He claimed that their assistance was tantamount to aiding a murder and was seeking $1 million in damages, according to court documents.
Two of the defendants, Noyola and Amy Carpenter, countersued Silva for invasion of privacy. They dropped their counterclaims Thursday night after the settlement was reached.
“This case was about using the legal system to harass us for helping our friend, and scare others out of doing the same,” Carpenter said. “But the claims were dropped because they had nothing. We did nothing wrong, and we would do it all again.â€
Brittni and Marcus Silva divorced in February 2023, a few weeks before Silva filed his lawsuit. The defendants alleged in their countersuit that Silva was a “serial emotional abuser†in pursuit of revenge and that he illegally searched Brittni’s phone without her consent.
Silva was represented by Jonathan Mitchell, a former Texas solicitor general who helped draft a strict Texas abortion law known as Senate Bill 8 before the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022.
Mitchell declined to comment Friday.
Brittni Silva took the medication in July of 2022 according to court filings. It was a few weeks after the Supreme Court allowed states to impose abortion bans. The lawsuit claimed that text messages were shared between the defendants discussing how to obtain the abortion medication.
Earlier this year, an appeals court blocked an attempt by Silva’s attorney to collect information from his ex-wife for the wrongful death lawsuit against her friends. The decision was upheld by the Texas Supreme Court, which criticized Silva in the footnotes of a concurring opinion signed by two of its conservative justices, Jimmy Blacklock and Phillip Devine.
“He has engaged in disgracefully vicious harassment and intimidation of his ex-wife,†the opinion read. “I can imagine no legitimate excuse for Marcus’s behavior as reflected in this record, many of the details of which are not fit for reproduction in a judicial opinion.â€
Abortion is a key issue this campaign season and is the number one priority for women younger than 30, according to survey results from KFF.
Thirteen states ban abortions at all stages of pregnancy, including Texas, which has some of the tightest restrictions in the country. Nine states have ballot measures to protect the right to an abortion this election.
FORT WORTH, Texas (AP) — Relatives of passengers who died in two crashes of Boeing 737 Max planes came to a federal court in Texas on Friday to listen as their lawyers asked a judge to throw out a plea agreement that the aircraft manufacturer struck with prosecutors and put the company on trial.
Their lawyers argued that Boeing’s punishment — mainly a fine amounting to about $244 million — would be too light for misleading regulators about a flight-control system that malfunctioned before the crashes. They accused Boeing and the Justice Department of airbrushing facts and ignoring that 346 people died in the crashes.
U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor asked a Boeing lawyer why he should accept the prepackaged plea deal and a sentence negotiated by a defendant.
The Boeing lawyer, Ben Hatch, said Boeing “is a pillar of the national economy and the national defense†and needs to know the punishment before it agrees to plead guilty to conspiracy to commit fraud, a felony. Otherwise, he said, the company could be disbarred from federal contracting.
“All the employees of the company, the shareholders of the company and a global and national supply chain … all of those are put into doubt if the sentencing” isn’t known, possibly for months, Hatch said.
The answer stunned and angered relatives of the victims.
“Boeing is too important for the economy — they’re too big to jail. That’s what he’s saying,†Michael Stumo, whose daughter Samya died in the second crash, said after the hearing. “It allows them to kill people with no consequences because they’re too big and because their shareholders won’t like it.â€
The government joined Boeing in asking the judge to accept the deal that they struck in July.
Sean Tonolli, senior deputy chief of the Justice Department’s fraud section, said the conspiracy count is the most serious crime prosecutors can bring — they can’t prove that Boeing’s deception of regulators caused the crashes. And, he said, going to trial is risky.
“We are confident in our case, but we don’t take for granted that we might not win,” he said.
The judge, who had received written arguments from all sides before the hearing in Fort Worth, asked questions but gave no indication if he is leaning one way or the other. He has expressed sympathy for the passengers’ families before, writing in a 2023 ruling about “Boeing’s egregious criminal conduct.â€
“You have given me a lot to think about,†O’Connor said to all the lawyers as Friday’s hearing ended. “I’ll get a ruling out just as soon as I can.â€
In July, Boeing agreed to plead guilty to a single felony count of conspiracy to commit fraud for allegedly deceiving Federal Aviation Administration regulators who were writing pilot-training requirements for the Max.
The FAA approved minimal, computer-based training for Boeing 737 pilots before they could fly the Max, the latest version of the 737. That helped Boeing by avoiding the need for training in flight simulators, which would have raised the cost for airlines to operate the Max.
Airlines began flying the Max in 2017. The first crash occurred in Indonesia in October 2018, followed in March 2019 by the second, in Ethiopia.
The plea agreement calls for Boeing to pay a fine of up to $487.2 million, but the fine would be cut in half by giving the company credit for $243.6 million it paid as part of a $2.5 billion settlement in 2021 to avoid prosecution. The Justice Department decided in May that Boeing violated terms of that settlement, leading to the new plea deal.
Boeing, which is based in Arlington, Virginia, would also invest $455 million in compliance and safety programs, and be placed on probation for three years.
The case is among a host of issues with which the manufacturer most contend.
Talks broke down this week with striking factory workers who assemble some of the company’s best-selling planes. The company withdrew its offer and S&P Global Ratings put it on its credit watch list, citing increased financial risk because of the labor unrest.
On Thursday, the company filed a complaint over what it calls unfair labor practices against the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers. Boeing in its complaint with the National Labor Relations Board said that the union’s public narrative is misleading and has made it difficult to reach a resolution.
VAN ZANDT COUNTY – A Van Zandt County man was sentenced to six years in a state prison in September after pleading guilty to animal cruelty charges to non-livestock animals. According to our news partner KETK, an SPCA reports said James Henry Eubanks was arrested on Jan. 19 after an investigation led to the removal of 10 “cruelly treated dogs†from a property near Wills Point.
The SPCA release also detailed, “At the time of this investigation, about 6 p.m., the temperature in the area was 15 degrees Fahrenheit. A total of 10 Pitbull-type dogs were confined to the property. Six of the dogs were separated out and confined to their own kennels and of those six dogs, three were deceased. The four remaining dogs were running loose on the property and were attempting to find a windbreak from the freezing wind. Investigators were not able to locate any food available to the dogs and all water sources on the property were frozen solid. Eubanks was identified as the caretaker of the dogs.â€
Courtney Burns, SPCA of Texas chief investigator of the Animal Cruelty Investigations Unit concluded in the release, “Animal crimes are notoriously known to yield weak punishments, so getting a sentence of six years in prison is a tremendous win for the SPCA of Texas and Van Zandt County.â€
TYLER – Tyler Police report that an argument early Friday afternoon quickly compounded into a shooting leaving one person dead. According to our news partner KETK, officers responded to a shooting at 3800 SSW Loop 323, at Taqueria Juniors. TPD reports the shooting suspect has been a “repeat customer†at the restaurant and there have been disagreements prior to this shooting. Police said that there was an argument at the business that escalated into a physical altercation and ultimately ended in a the fatal shooting. One person has been detained and is being questioned by police.
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UPDATE: Boil Water Notice Rescinded – October 12, 2024
TROUP – Thursday evening, the City of Troup issued a boil water notice due to a line break in it’s public water system. The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality has required the city to notify all customers to boil their water prior to consumption. Meaning, washing hands/face, brushing teeth and drinking.
TCEQ officials reminds residents, to ensure destruction of all harmful bacteria and other microbes, water for drinking, cooking, and ice making should be boiled and cooled prior to use for drinking water or human consumption purposes. The water should be brought to a vigorous rolling boil and then boiled for two minutes. When it is no longer necessary to boil the water, the public water system officials will notify customers that the water is safe for drinking water or human consumption purposes.
TYLER – The Smith County District Attorney’s Office is reportedly seeking the death penalty in the trial of Jamaurea Britton, 20. Britton has been indicted for the 2023 murder of Dejah Hood.
18-year-old Dejah Hood was found dead in a ravine behind the Hollytree Apartments in September of 2023 after she was reported missing by her mother earlier that day. She was reportedly out with friends, including Britton, when she disappeared.
Britton was first interviewed by Tyler PD and reportedly said that Hood had been to his apartment and then left. An affidavit said an officer noticed blood near the entry of the apartment. Britton reportedly denied the blood was human.
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