Judge gives man 60 years in Craigslist rape case
CASPER, Wyo. (AP) — A judge has sentenced a man to serve 60 years in prison for using Craigslist to arrange the rape of a Casper woman.
District Judge David Park on Monday sentenced 28-year-old Jebidiah James Stipe, of Twentynine Palms, Calif.
Stipe pleaded guilty last month to sexual assault, aggravated kidnapping and aggravated burglary.
Prosecutors say Stipe pretended to be his ex-girlfriend in Casper when he posted an ad on the Internet advertising site Craigslist late last year. He stated the woman was looking for a man to carry out a “rape fantasy.”
Prosecutors say Ty Oliver McDowell, of Bar Nunn, responded to the ad and raped the woman. McDowell also pleaded guilty to felony charges. His sentencing is set for Tuesday.
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Ex-Chicago cop convicted of lying about torture
CHICAGO (AP) — A decorated former Chicago police lieutenant accused of suffocating, shocking and beating confessions out of scores of suspects was convicted Monday of federal perjury and obstruction of justice charges for lying about the torture.
Former Lt. Jon Burge, whose name has become synonymous with police brutality and abuse of power in the country’s third-largest city, did not react as the guilty verdicts were read. But several attorneys who have represented Burge’s alleged victims celebrated outside the courtroom, hugging each other and calling colleagues to deliver the news.
“I’m very happy and I’m very gratified,” said attorney Flint Taylor. “Not for myself but (for) all of the people who have fought so long and so hard to bring it to the point that it is today.”
None of Burge’s lawyers or supporters spoke to reporters after the verdict. He will remain free on bond until his Nov. 5 sentencing, when he faces up to 45 years in prison.
For decades, dozens of suspects — almost all of them black men — claimed Burge and his officers tortured them into confessing to crimes ranging from armed robbery to murder.
U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald said “a message needs to go out that that conduct is unacceptable” and asked others who feel they have evidence of torture to come forward. He wouldn’t comment on specific cases but said the investigation into torture at the hands of Chicago police remains open, hinting at the possibility more former officers could be charged.
Fitzgerald also said it was sad that it took until 2010 for it to be proven in a courtroom that torture once occurred in Chicago police stations. More than 100 victims have said the torture started in the 1970s and persisted until the 1990s at police stations on the city’s South and West sides.
Former Illinois Gov. George Ryan released four condemned men from death row in 2003 after Ryan said Burge had extracted confessions from them using torture. The four later reached a $20 million settlement with the city.
The allegations of torture and coerced confessions eventually led to a still-standing moratorium on Illinois’ death penalty and the emptying of death row — moves credited with re-igniting the global fight against capital punishment. But they also earned Chicago a reputation as a haven for rogue cops, a place where police could abuse suspects without notice or punishment.
Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley was Cook County state’s attorney when many Burge-related cases were under investigation and in court. City Law Department spokeswoman Jennifer Hoyle said when Burge was charged that Daley had given a sworn statement to special prosecutors investigating Burge. Daley hasn’t been charged with any wrongdoing.
“I was very proud of my role as prosecutor, I was not the mayor, I was not the police chief, I did not promote this man in the 80s, so let’s put everything into perspective,” Daley said in a statement at the time. He did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday.
Burge was fired from the police department in 1993 over the alleged mistreatment of a suspect, but he never was criminally charged in that case or any other, leading to widespread outrage in Chicago’s black neighborhoods. The community anger intensified when Burge moved to Florida on his police pension and his alleged victims remained in prison. It wasn’t immediately clear how Monday’s verdict would affect the pension and no message could be left at a telephone number for the police department’s pension board.
Chicago police declined to comment on the verdict. The Fraternal Order of Police said in statement that “hopefully this brings closure to this long-standing dispute,” though that seemed unlikely given Fitzgerald’s ongoing investigation.
In 2006, a special prosecutor’s report found dozens of men had credible claims of abuse but that the statute of limitations had run out on any relevant crimes. It wasn’t until Burge’s 2008 indictment that any officer was criminally charged in relation to the alleged torture.
Burge was charged with lying about the alleged torture in a lawsuit filed by former death row inmate Madison Hobley, who was sentenced to death for a 1987 fire that killed seven people, including his wife and son, and pardoned by Ryan.
Hobley claimed detectives put a plastic typewriter cover over his head to make it impossible for him to breathe. Burge denied knowing anything about the “bagging,” or taking part in it. The indictment against Burge never said Hobley was tortured, but that Burge lied with respect to participating in or knowing of any torture under his watch.
Burge testified in his own defense at the four-week trial, denying he ever physically abused suspects or witnessed any other officers doing so. Prosecutors presented testimony from five men who said Burge and officers under his command held plastic bags over their heads, shocked them with electric current and put loaded guns in their mouths during the 1970s and 1980s to elicit confessions.
The testimony of those men echoed what others have long said: Black men suspected of crimes didn’t leave interrogation rooms at Chicago’s Area 2 police station until they told detectives what they wanted to hear.
Mark Clements, who claims Burge’s officers tortured him into giving a false confession in 1981 when he was 16 but did not testify at the trial, called Monday a “sad day in Chicago.”
“I sat in a prison cell, and I prayed for this day,” Clements said, tears pouring down his face and his voice echoing throughout the courthouse lobby. “Today is a victory for every poor person.”
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524 Guard soldiers headed to Arizona-Mexico border
PHOENIX (AP) — Federal officials told Arizona’s attorney general and a congresswoman Monday that 524 of the 1,200 National Guard troops headed to the U.S.-Mexico border will be deployed in the state by August or September.
U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and Attorney General Terry Goddard, both Democrats, met with Obama administration officials in Tucson along with dozens of law enforcement officials and community leaders. The federal officials included John Brennan, deputy national security adviser for homeland security.
Giffords spokesman C.J. Karamargin said the 524 troops are being trained for deployment in August, and Goddard said two drone aircraft also will be used in Arizona. Goddard called the commitment a first step.
Another 224 troops will head to California, 72 to New Mexico and 250 to Texas. A national liaison office will draw another 130.
The Arizona troops will be assigned to entry identification teams and deployed between ports of entry to help the Border Patrol spot illegal border crossers.
Brennan, Goddard said, has the job of evaluating “the whole picture. He never said this is all. He said this is what we’re going to do right now.”
The federal officials, sent by President Barack Obama, were to meet later Monday with Gov. Jan Brewer in her Phoenix office. The ,eeting resulted from Brewer’s June 3 visit to the White House, where she and Obama discussed border security and immigration. Brewer asked for specifics on how the plans apply to Arizona.
The president previously announced plans to send 1,200 troops to the border, and he asked Congress for $600 million to pay for 1,000 more Border Patrol agents, 160 new federal immigration officers and two unmanned aircraft.
Brewer said after the June 3 meeting that Obama had assured her that the majority of the 1,200 troops would go to Arizona, the state with the most illegal border-crossings.
Brewer had sought the soldiers to help stem the flow of illegal immigrants and drug smugglers across the border, and she reacted to Obama’s initial announcement by saying 1,200 Guard personnel wouldn’t be enough. She also urged Obama to send National Guard helicopters and surveillance drones to the border.
Santa Cruz County Sheriff Tony Estrada, whose county abuts on the border, called the federal effort “long overdue.”
“We’ve never had the attention, and we’ve never had the response or resources along the border that we have had recently,” Estrada said after the Tucson meeting. “And once we have the right match, the right combination, I think we’ll be able to claim some victories. It’s not going to stop, the border will never be sealed. It will be safer, maybe more secure, but it will always be active.”
The meetings follow months of heated debate over illegal immigration sparked by the passage of a new Arizona law in April. The law generally requires police investigating another incident or crime to ask people about their immigration status if there’s a “reasonable suspicion” they’re in the country illegally.
The meetings were held as Arizona officials awaited word on a widely anticipated federal legal challenge to the measure. Obama has called the law “misguided.” Brewer has called its enactment necessary due to federal inaction on border enforcement.
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HAVANA (AP) — President Bashar Assad of Syria sat down with Cuban leader Raul Castro on Monday as part of his first tour of Latin America, a trip that is taking him to meetings with many of the region’s left-leaning governments.
A four-star army general, Raul Castro exchanged his traditional olive-green fatigues for a dark suit to host Assad at the stately Palace of the Revolution. There was no word on what they discussed, but Cuban state media have said Assad was coming to promote cooperation between his Mideastern nation and the communist-run island.
Earlier, the governments of Cuba and Syria announced they had reached an agreement to jointly battle drug trafficking and help each other dismantle international smuggling syndicates working between both countries.
Assad’s first Latin America stop was in Venezuela for talks with socialist President Hugo Chavez. After Cuba, he heads to Brazil, where President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva is a friend of both Raul and Fidel Castro. Assad also plans a visit to Argentina, led by the center-left government of Cristina Fernandez.
Cuba and Syria are on a list of nations the U.S. considers state sponsors of terrorism, an allegation Havana has angrily denied for decades.
Assad spent much of the weekend with Venezuela’s Chavez, who denounced Syria’s neighbor Israel as a “genocidal” government.
On Sunday, Assad called Israel a state “based on crime, slaughter.”
Also Monday, U.N. General Assembly president Ali Treki met with Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez during the veteran Libyan diplomat’s official visit to Cuba.
“I’d like to thank the United Nations for the role it plays in defending peace and international rights and, in particular, for its repeated resolutions seeking an unconditional end to the United States’ economic and financial blockade against Cuba,” Rodriguez said, referring to annual votes by the world body to condemn Washington’s trade embargo — the last of which passed in October on a 187-3 vote.
“He honors us with his presence,” Rodriguez said of Treki, who took the helm of the General Assembly last year.
Treki saluted Cuba for sending troops to African nations like Angola in the 1970s amid fighting for independence from colonial rulers.
“In Africa we feel very appreciative of Cuba for its role and that of President Fidel Castro in the liberation of our continent,” Treki said through an interpreter. “In Africa, we never forget what Cuba did.”
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Mexican governor candidate killed, cartels blamed
MEXICO CITY (AP) — Gunmen assassinated the front-running candidate for governor of a Mexican border state Monday in what President Felipe Calderon called an attempt by drug gangs to sway local and state elections this weekend.
The assailants ambushed Rodolfo Torre’s vehicle as he headed to the airport in Ciudad Victoria, capital of Tamaulipas, a state torn by a turf battle between two rival drug cartels. At least four other people traveling with him were killed.
“Today has proven that organized crime is a permanent threat and that we should close ranks to confront it and avoid more actions like the cowardly assassination that today has shaken the country,” Calderon said in a televised speech. “We cannot and should not permit crime to impose its will or its perverse rules.”
He warned that organized crime “wants to interfere in the decisions of citizens and in electoral processes.”
Torre, of Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, is the first gubernatorial candidate assassinated in Mexico in recent memory. He is the highest-ranking candidate killed since Luis Donaldo Colosio, also for the PRI, was gunned down while running for president in 1994.
The attack was the biggest setback yet for Sunday’s elections in 12 states. Corruption scandals, threats and attacks on politicians have raised fears for months that Mexico’s powerful drug cartels are buying off candidates they support and intimidating those they oppose.
Last month, gunmen killed Jose Guajardo Varela, a candidate for mayor of the Tamaulipas town of Valle Hermoso. Guajardo, of Calderon’s National Action Party, or PAN, had received warnings to drop his campaign.
Several parties, including the PAN, had said they could not find anyone to run for mayor in some towns in Tamaulipas and other border states because of drug gang intimidation.
In the worst corruption scandal of the election, Cancun mayor Gregorio Sanchez was arrested last month for alleged drug trafficking ties, forcing him to drop his campaign for governor of Quintana Roo state. Sanchez was charged with protecting two of Mexico’s most brutal drug gangs, allegations he has dismissed as politically motivated.
Calderon’s government did not say which gang was suspected in Torre’s assassination or why he would be targeted.
Tamaulipas, which borders Texas, has become a battleground between the Gulf cartel and its former ally, the Zetas gang of hit men. Gangs have staged bold attacks on security forces, ambushing army patrols and setting up blockades near army garrisons.
Tamaulipas state election authorities met to decide whether to suspend the vote.
The PAN and the leftist Democratic Revolution Part, or PRD, said they would suspend campaigning by their own gubernatorial candidates in Tamaulipas, but PAN party leader Cesar Nava said he hoped the vote would go forward.
PRI national leader Beatriz Paredes also indicated she wanted the elections to take place, urging supporters to go the polls. “Nothing is going to intimidate us,” she said in a statement.
Torre, 46, was heading to the airport to fly to the border city of Matamoros, where he planned to attend the closing campaign events of the PRI’s mayoral candidate, said Tamaulipas state Gov. Eugenio Hernandez. Four people were wounded in the attack, including Torres’s personal secretary, Hernandez told Radio Formula.
Television footage from the scene showed several vehicles and sheet-covered bodies along the side of the highway.
Torre, 46, held a significant lead in polls as candidate for a coalition comprising two small parties and the PRI, which has long governed Tamaulipas.
George Grayson, a Mexico expert at the College of William & Mary in Virginia, said the assassination would almost certainly keep many voters home, but he expected the situation would only benefit the PRI.
“The execution and the … climate of fear will dampen voter turnout on Sunday, which will help the PRI because they have the best political machine,” he said.
The PRI, which ruled Mexico for 71 years before losing the presidency in 2000, is hoping that a strong showing in Sunday’s elections will put it on the path to regain the presidency in 2012.
The conservative PAN has formed uncomfortable alliances with the PRD to oust the PRI from several states, though not in Tamaulipas. PAN and PRD politicians have insinuated that PRI politicians in Tamaulipas and other states have ties to drug gangs, allegations the PRI dismisses as tired campaign tactics.
Drug gang violence has rocketed since Calderon deployed thousands of troops and federal police across the country in 2006 to wage an all-out battle against cartels. Some 23,000 people have been killed in drug-related violence.
Torre, a physician, had served as the state’s health secretary from 2005 to 2009. He was married and had three teenage children.