A judge in eastern Washington has been charged with domestic violence assault, according to court documents.
Benton-Franklin Superior Court Judge Sam Swanberg was cited with two counts of fourth-degree assault domestic violence in Franklin County District Court, The Tri-City Herald reported. He’s scheduled to enter a plea to the charges on Feb. 8.
Swanberg’s lawyer Scott Johnson said Swanberg will enter a not guilty plea to the charges.
A temporary protection order for his ex-wife is in place until then. A 1-year no-contact order is also in place in Benton County to prevent him from contacting an ex-girlfriend, who said he harassed her after their breakup. Those allegations have been referred to an outside prosecutor for review.
Swanberg’s attorney said they had not been aware of the Franklin County investigation before the citation was issued on Friday. The sheriff’s department issued the citation without involvement by Franklin County prosecutors.
Sheriff’s investigators said in court documents they tried to contact Swanberg, and identified themselves as detectives investigating the matter, but he did not return their calls.
Swanberg’s attorney Scott Johnson said Swanberg absolutely disputes his ex-wife’s accounts and called the charges questionable.
Swanberg was accused of abuse by his former spouse in a court filing last month. The filing was part of supporting documentation in the civil case requesting a no-contact order brought by an ex-girlfriend.
Jury trials have been paused in some western Michigan counties due to a surge in coronavirus cases, court officials said Monday.
Chief Judge Mark Trusock said all jury trials in Kent County 17th Circuit Court, based in Grand Rapids, were on hold until March 7. Ottawa County Probate Court and the 20th Judicial Circuit Court, based in Grand Haven, will not summon the public to courthouses to serve as jurors until at least Feb. 1, according to a statement released by the court.
Michigan health officials said last week that the state’s record-high COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations could peak in late January or early February, and they urged the public to take steps to help control the spread.
Ottawa County court officials said their decision was made in consultation with the Ottawa County Department of Public Health. Circuit Court Administrator Susan Franklin said judges don’t want to bring large numbers of people into the courthouses given the current rates of COVID transmission.
Courts across the U.S. have paused jury trials at various points during the pandemic. The highly contagious omicron variant has prompted additional pauses in recent days, including in Indiana’s largest county and in the state’s second most-populous county.
A federal appeals court has ruled two counties that hold immigrant detainees at local jails must terminate contracts with federal authorities starting Thursday.
Leaders in Kankakee and McHenry counties sued over an Illinois law aimed at ending immigration detention in the state by Jan. 1 and lost. But they were allowed to delay while on appeal.
In the ruling, the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the counties hadn’t made their case.
“We conclude that the counties have not made a ‘strong showing’ that they are likely to succeed on the merits,” the three-judge panel concluded.
Roughly 100 detainees remain at the jails. Winding down the contracts is expected to take a few weeks.
The Illinois law has been celebrated by immigrant rights activists who say detaining people awaiting immigration hearings is inhumane and costly. They’re pushing to release detainees instead of transferring them elsewhere.
Last year, downstate Pulaski County cleared its jail of immigrant detainees. Court records show 15 were released. Dozens of others were transferred to Kansas and the two Illinois facilities.
Officials in McHenry and Kankakee counties, who didn’t return messages Thursday, have previously said they’d continue to appeal. They say the contracts are lucrative and argue that ending them simply transfers detainees further from their families.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement didn’t return a message Thursday.
A rural Alaska man who threatened to kill the state’s two U.S. senators in a series of profanity-laced voice messages left at their offices in Washington, D.C., has pleaded guilty to making the threats in exchange for having other charges dropped.
Jay Allen Johnson, 65, entered his guilty pleas Monday in federal court in Fairbanks to two counts of threatening to kill a U.S. official. U.S. District Judge Ralph Beistline accepted Johnson’s pleas and set sentencing for April 8.
Johnson, who has been in custody since his arrest Oct. 4, has asked for an earlier sentencing.
He faces up 10 years in jail on each charge and will be under a protective order for three years not to contact either U.S. Sens. Lisa Murkowski or Dan Sullivan, any of their family members or staff.
He also must forfeit two pistols, three revolvers, a shotgun and a rifle found at his home in the small community of Delta Junction. He’s not legally able to own handguns because he’s a felon for repeated drunken driving convictions.
In exchange for his guilty plea to the two counts, the government agreed to drop four other charges against Johnson, including making interstate threats and threatening to damage property by fire or explosives.
A Georgia judge has thrown out murder charges against two people who were arrested in a 2004 killing, barring the state from ever charging them again.
Muscogee County Superior Court Judge Gil McBride on Wednesday dismissed charges against Rebecca Haynie and Donald Keith Phillips in the death of William Kirby Smith Jr. in Columbus.
McBride wrote that the state’s delays in prosecuting the case are intolerable and the fact that charges were only filed after the involvement of true crime reality show further compromised the case.
“The state has had available vast public resources and ample opportunity to bring this case to trial during the approximately 17 years that have elapsed since the murder giving rise to these charges and seven years since defendants were first arrested for this crime,” McBride wrote.
Muscogee County prosecutors had asked McBride to drop the charges, saying they did not have enough evidence to win convictions, but wanted the chance to refile them later. But McBride agreed with defense lawyers who wanted Haynie and Phillips protected from future prosecution, saying he would not allow “further delay and further uncertainty.”
Haynie and Phillips were charged with murder in the 2004 homicide of Haynie’s then-husband Smith inside Kirby’s Speed Shop in Columbus. Prosecutors alleged Haynie, who was his estranged wife, conspired with her lover Phillips to kill him, shooting him twice.
McBride had already found prosecutors in contempt in June for disobeying court orders to provide materials to the defense, including evidence related to “Cold Justice,” a show that featured the suspects’ arrests.
“It is doubtful defendants would have ever been charged based on the record of this case in the absence of interest from a California entertainment studio 10 years after the crime was committed,” McBride wrote. “This order is the outcome that results naturally when forensic inquiry and the pursuit of truth are confused with entertainment.”
During a preliminary hearing in 2014, investigators said they immediately considered the estranged wife a suspect, as she and Smith were involved in a contentious divorce, and Smith claimed evidence of his wife’s infidelity.
The U.K. Supreme Court ruled Monday that Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidó should be recognized as the nation’s interim president in a case that will ultimately determine who controls almost $2 billion of gold held by the Bank of England.
A five-judge panel unanimously agreed that British courts must honor the U.K. government’s 2019 decision to recognize Guaidó as interim president. The question is central to the case because Guaidó and President Nicolás Maduro have named separate boards to oversee Venezuela’s central bank and both have laid claim to the gold.
But the case isn’t over. The Supreme Court sent it back to a lower court to decide whether the Guaidó board has any legal standing after Venezuela’s Supreme Tribunal of Justice declared Guaidó’s appointments unconstitutional.
Guaidó said he welcomed the ruling and looked forward to demonstrating why the U.K. courts shouldn’t recognize the decisions of the Supreme Tribunal.
British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell appeared in court on Saturday for a rare weekend hearing where attorneys made arguments about how the judge should instruct a jury on the law in Maxwell’s sex abuse trial.
U.S. District Judge Alison Nathan scheduled the hearing — held in an otherwise closed courthouse and with jurors absent — in an effort to keep Maxwell’s trial on a fast track that will have her case reach a jury early next week. Closing arguments and Nathan’s reading of about 80 pages of instructions are set for Monday.
Prosecutors and Maxwell’s attorneys spent the morning in federal court in Manhattan sparring over the exact wording the judge will use to describe to jurors the legal elements that must be proven to convict Maxwell on six criminal counts, including sex trafficking of a minor. One of the requests by Maxwell’s lawyers that was approved: the judge should refer to her as “Ms. Maxwell” instead of “the defendant.”
Maxwell, 59, has pleaded not guilty to charges that prosecutors say show that she and financier Jeffrey Epstein were involved in a scheme to groom teenagers to have sexual encounters with him. The defense has countered by claiming she’s being made a scapegoat for 66-year-old Epstein, who killed himself in his Manhattan jail cell in 2019 as he awaited his own sex trafficking trial.
The defense rested its case on Friday after Maxwell told the judge she wouldn’t testify.
“Your Honor, the government has not proven its case beyond a reasonable doubt so there is no reason for me to testify,” Maxwell said.
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