Category: Crime

Ronald Gray, a cook with the 82d Airborne Division’s 3rd Battalion, 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment was convicted in 1988 by a general court martial of two counts of premeditated murder, one count of attempted premeditated murder, three rapes, two robberies, and two counts of forcible sodomy. He has been sitting on Fort Leavenworth’s US Disciplinary Barracks death row since his conviction.

President George W. Bush signed his death warrant and his execution was originally scheduled for December 10, 2008. Appeals were rejected in 2015 and 2017. Now, Stars & Stripes reports that the Supreme Court has refused to hear his latest round of appeals.

Lawyers for Gray had asked the court to determine whether military or civilian courts should be responsible for hearing appeals in the case.

Gray has filed numerous appeals in recent years claiming errors during his military trial and subsequent appeals, including claims that his appeals lawyer was ineffective, his sentence was the result of racial discrimination and military authorities failed to disclose evidence about his competency.

Many of those appeals have been dismissed or delayed in recent years, as the case has been heard by officials from a U.S. District Court in Kansas, the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, the Army Court of Criminal Appeals and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces.

Now he’s on the fast track to complete his sentence – the be the first soldier executed by the Army since John A. Bennett was hanged on April 13, 1961 for First Degree Child Rape and Attempted First Degree Murder of an 11-year-old Austrian girl.

We talked a bit about Timmy Kinner, the lunatic who attacked a child’s birthday party with a knife, injuring at least nine people including the 3-year-old birthday girl, Ruya, who has since passed because of her injuries. According to the Elko Free Press, Kinner, who has an extensive criminal record, will be representing himself in court.

Timmy Kinner, 30, has been charged with several felonies including first degree murder, aggravated battery and assault with a deadly weapon after police say he attacked the children and adults at the girl’s birthday party Saturday night.

Police say Kinner had been staying as a guest at an apartment in the complex, but had recently been asked to leave because of his behavior.

All of the victims in the attack were members of refugee families from Iraq, Ethiopia and Syria. Police have said there is no evidence to suggest the attack was committed as a hate crime.

Of course, because there was no firearm involved, the tragedy has attracted little media attention. Also, the attacker was a person of color, as well as his victims.

The same day as the stabbing incident, there were 13 people shot in Chicago – including 3 children.

But a white guy who shot five white journalists in Annapolis had already sucked all of the oxygen out of the room before the weekend.

In Pierre, South Dakota, Matthew Leddon, a former Army Reservist claimed to a judge that his ingestion of the anti-malarial drug, mefloquine, during his deployment to Afghanistan made him a meth dealer.

I never took mefloquine, but I know people who have and I guess it does cause some weird stuff to happen in your noggin, but none of those people sell meth. The judge in this case agrees with my experience;

Judge Barnett told Leddon he had no doubt that mefloquine perhaps made some soldiers sick.

But it was a little too convenient for Leddon to tell police after he was arrested that he planned to use the 60 baggies of meth to commit suicide because he was so depressed.

There were many other opportunities when he could have commited suicide. The mefloquine might damage people’s mental health, Barnett said.,

“But it didn’t make them dishonest and it didn’t make them dealers.”

The judge didn’t appreciate Leddon’s attempt to skate on the charges because of his military and LEO history;

Barnett told Leddon he did wrong when he was quick to mention his police and Army experience to Pierre police officers who made a vehicle stop of Leddon and Jason Mahto on Sept. 9, 2016, on Harrison Avenue. A police officer said in a court document that Leddon raised suspicions by appearing to brag about being an ex-police officer and veteran.

Police officers found 60 doses of meth and scales for weighing drugs and a meth “snort tube” in Leddon’s pocket used for ingesting the illegal drug, Barnett said.

Police officers said one of the first things Leddon told them was that he was a former cop and soldier, Barnett told Leddon. That’s unfair to law officers doing their job, an attempt “to manipulate what should be a position of honesty and honor. I think you brought out your military, army and police service to deter that officer from doing his job. And I think you’re kind of putting it out there in front of me so I won’t do my job.”

Leddon was sentenced to 41 days (plus 3 days of “time served”) and 3 years of supervised release.

Reality Winner, the NSA contractor who leaked classified information to the media last year, changed her plea, as expected, to guilty of a charge of one federal count of willful retention and transmission of national defense information. It earned her a sentence of sixty-three months in jail and three years of supervised release, pending approval of the judge, according to the New York Times.

The Justice Department prosecuted Ms. Winner under the Espionage Act, a World War I-era law that criminalizes the unauthorized disclosure of national-security secrets that could be used to harm the United States or aid a foreign adversary.

Ms. Winner’s prosecution galvanized transparency advocates, who mounted a publicity campaign in her support that even included a billboard in Augusta, the east Georgia city where Ms. Winner lived at the time of her arrest. They were particularly infuriated by a judge’s ruling that she be held until her trial.

“They’re just coming down on her so tough,” Billie Winner-Davis, Ms. Winner’s mother, said in an interview after Tuesday’s plea hearing was scheduled. “I can only think that it’s because she was the very first one: the one they wanted to make an example out of, the one they wanted to nail to the door as a message to others.”

Or, it might be that they’re coming down on her because she’s a criminal.

“It’s harsh, it’s outdated, it needs to be reformed,” Ms. Winner-Davis said. “I wanted to fight the Espionage Act. Reality Winner, I don’t want her name to go down as being someone in history who betrayed or hurt her country.”

Maybe Miss Winner should have considered the consequences before she committed the crime.

You probably remember Reality Winner, the government contractor who released classified documents to the media last year. Well, she’s been sitting in jail this whole time. Fox News reports that she plans to plead guilty and she’s submitted a plea agreement to the court.

The Air Force veteran entered a plea deal on Thursday following a phone call with U.S. Magistrate Judge Brian Epps, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.

Winner was charged, under the Espionage Act, with removing classified material from a government facility and mailing it to a news outlet.

She was working as a contractor with a Top Secret security clearance with Pluribus International Corporation at a federal facility in Georgia when, according to the Justice Department, she printed out a sheet of paper with classified information and mailed it to a news organization.

I suspect that she’ll get a “Time served” sentence.

Top Kone sends a link to the news that the District Attorney of Hardin County, Kentucky is seeking the death penalty for Aaron Lee Pearson because Pearson is suspected of murdering 71-year-old Norman Hall, a 22-year veteran of the Army, during a robbery;

Hall died from multiple blows to his head and face and from being stabbed in the neck, officials said.

Pearson also was indicted on complicity to first-degree robbery and complicity to tampering with physical evidence charges.

He is accused of taking an oxygen tank Hall used from the victim’s residence and throwing it “into a rocky terrain in an effort to conceal it from police,” according to his indictment.

Hall was found after Radcliff Police De­part­ment officers performed a welfare check Sept. 9, 2016, after neighbors said Hall hadn’t been seen for a few days.

Pearson’s partner in crime, Eloysia James-Venerable, 18, of Radcliff, is expected to testify in the trial, because there is no honor among thieves, apparently.

James-Venerable, who was 16 when Hall was killed, accepted a plea deal in February that recommends she serve 20 to 50 years or life in prison, with parole eligibility after 20 years.

The agreement also includes assurances she will testify against Pear­son. Should James-Venerable not provide honest testimony, the commonwealth will remove the offer and she will be sentenced to life without parole.

She was charged with complicity to commit murder; first-degree bur­g­lary; first-degree receiving stolen property — firearm; and tampering with physical evidence.

An Orange County, California jury recommended the death penalty for 53-year-old Andrew Urdiales, a serial killer while he was in the Marine Corps in Southern California.

In 1986, Urdiales drove from Camp Pendleton to Saddleback College in Mission Viejo and approached 23-year-old Robbin Brandley at a parking lot, OCDA said. He stabbed her 41 times with a hunting knife and fled.

In 1988, Urdiales picked up 29-year-old Julie McGhee in Indian Wells and drove to a remote area in Cathedral City, according to officials. He shot her in the head after having sex with her. Urdiales left her body, took some of her belongings and fled, OCDA said.

Less than three months later, Urdiales picked up 31-year-old Mary Ann Wells in San Diego, gave her money and drove her into an alley, officials said. After having sex with her, Urdiales shot her in the head and took back the cash he gave her.

In 1989, Urdiales picked up 18-year-old Tammie Erwin and drove to a secluded area in Palm Springs, where he had sex with her, according to OCDA. He used the same gun to kill McGhee and Wells to shoot Erwin in the head and hip, officials added. He then dismantled the weapon and disposed of the parts separately.

Three years later, Urdiales drove to a bus stop and offered Jennifer Asbenson a ride to work in Palm Springs, OCDA said. The next day, he “lured” her into his car, took her somewhere isolated in the Palm Springs desert and beat and sexually assaulted her. He locked her into the trunk of his vehicle, but she was able to escape.

Urdiales was sentenced to death in Illinois in 2011, but the State abolished the death penalty and his sentence was commuted to life without parole…then California extradited him for their own trial.

Yeah, Charles Manson was sentenced to death in California, too.