PI Newswire

Authorities say a bail bondswoman handcuffed a suspect to her stairs after jailers refused to accept the man.

Jean Marie Chartier is charged with the false imprisonment of Reynaldo Delarosa, a man facing his own unrelated charges for drug possession and DWI.

Court documents showed Chartier called Delarosa and arranged a meeting in Webb City. Authorities said Chartier took Delarosa to the Jasper County jail to revoke his bond. Jailers refused to admit Delarosa because Chartier did not have a judge’s order.

Prosecutors said Chartier took Delarosa to her home and handcuffed him to the banister of her staircase, intending to keep him there until she could see a judge the following morning.

Delarosa was confined in her home for at least 24 hours. Chartier released him after he arranged for two friends to co-sign a $7,500 bond.

Upon her own arrest, Chartier posted a $25,000 bond.

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Arnold Bauer, a 93-year-old Pearl Harbor survivor and possible elder abuse victim, remains in the Veterans Affairs hospital in La Jolla, receiving care for several serious medical issues.

Bauer was taken to the hospital on Tuesday after authorities found him disoriented and living in filth in his home outside El Cajon. His caretaker was arrested on charges of elder abuse, theft, forgery and false imprisonment and remains in jail on $1-million bail.

Federal privacy laws prohibit VA officials from discussing the details of a patient’s condition.

However, an official said that in cases of aging, vulnerable veterans, a social worker is assigned to work with the family to find a suitable living arrangement for the veteran, either at home with an attendant or in a nursing home. All veterans are eligible for 30 days of care under such conditions while officials determine long-term eligibility.

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SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. — Clay Greene and the estate of Harold Scull, Greene’s deceased partner of 20 years, reached a $650,000 settlement July 22 resolving their lawsuit against the County of Sonoma and other defendants for the damages the couple suffered due to municipal employees’ discriminatory and unlawful conduct.

Greene and Scull lived together for 20 years and had executed both mutual powers of attorney for medical and financial decisions and wills naming each other as beneficiaries. In April 2008, County employees in the Public Guardians Office separated the couple after Scull fell outside their shared home. In the next three months, County officials ignored the couple’s legal documentation, unlawfully auctioned their possessions, terminated their lease and forced Greene into an assisted living facility against his will.

The County did not consult Greene in Scull’s medical care and prevented the two from seeing one another. In August 2008, before the partners could be reunited, Scull passed away after completing a photo album of the couple’s life for Greene.

In August 2009, Greene and the representative of Scull’s estate, the couple’s longtime friend Jannette Biggerstaff, filed a lawsuit alleging elder abuse, elder financial abuse, breach of fiduciary duty, intentional and negligent infliction of emotional distress, false imprisonment and other claims.

Biggerstaff stated, “There is no possible justification for what happened to my friends Harold and Clay, and I still feel outraged and heartbroken that they suffered such a terrible tragedy, which was made worse by the County spreading such terrible lies about Clay. But I am pleased that their rights have been vindicated, and I’m hopeful that their story will help to prevent this from happening to other vulnerable people.”

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With a former girlfriend like this, who needs enemies?

Consider the 25-year-old Southern California woman sentenced to a year in jail Friday after being convicted of sending hundreds of threatening text messages to herself — in a bid to get her former boyfriend and his sister-in-law arrested by blaming them as the authors.

Jeanne Manunga had reported the texts she was sending to herself to three different police departments following her 2008 breakup. Orange County prosecutors told the Orange County Register that the defendant used a pre-paid cell phone she purchased in her former boyfriend’s sister-in-law’s name to send herself the texts.

The former boyfriend was arrested once and his sister-in-law three times. Superior Court Judge Patrick H. Donahue ordered the defendant to pay the victims $50,000 in restitution.

The authorities cracked the case after the victims tracked down where Manunga purchased the pre-paid phone.

A jury convicted Manunga in May of three counts of felony false imprisonment by fraud and two misdemeanors for filing false police reports.

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A Chicago Heights police officer handcuffed and knocked down a disabled 67-year-old woman, then maliciously prosecuted her for “disorderly conduct,” after the woman, who has spinal stenosis, severe arthritis and osteoporosis and walks with a cane, could not get up with her hands cuffed behind her back, she claims in Federal Court.

Annie Black claims that Officer Steve Ankarlo approached her as she spoke with a friend while legally parked in a convenience store parking lot, and told them, “‘I bet none of you all have licenses or insurance,’ or words to that effect.”
Black says she told Ankarlo that she had a license and insurance, and he told her to “shut the fuck up.”

Black says she “suffers from severe arthritis, spinal stenosis, and osteoporosis … walks with a cane, and her disability is obvious to any observer.”

Nonetheless, she says, Ankarlo told her “to put her hands behind her back so he could cuff her. She says she told him that she had just gotten out of the hospital, and had severe arthritis, so she could not place her hands behind her back because it would hurt her.”

But she says Ankarlo grabbed her arms, “wrenched them behind her back, and placed handcuffs on her wrists. Plaintiff immediately cried out in pain.”

As Ankarlo pulled her “backwards by the handcuffs towards his squad car,” Black says, she “stumbled and fell to the ground onto her back.”

The complaint continues: “Defendant Officer ordered her to get up, but Plaintiff was unable to comply. Other squad cars pulled into the parking lot. One of the newly arrived officers assisted Plaintiff to her feet and told Defendant Officer to remove the handcuffs. The handcuffs were then removed.

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Georgia’s Supreme Court is upholding the government’s right to put non-sex offenders on the state’s sex-offender registry, highlighting a little-noticed (but growing) nationwide practice.

Atlanta criminal defense attorney Ann Marie Fitz estimated that perhaps thousands of convicts convicted of non-sexual crimes have been placed in sex-offender databases. Fitz represents a convict who was charged with false imprisonment when he was 18 for briefly detaining a 17-year-old girl during a soured drug deal. He unsuccessfully challenged his mandatory, lifelong sex-offender listing to the Georgia Supreme Court, which ruled against him Monday.

Under the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act of 2007, the states are required to have statutes demanding sex-offender registration for those convicted of kidnapping or falsely imprisoning minors. The Georgia court ruled that the plain meaning of “sex offender” was overridden by the state’s law.

“Rainer’s belief that the term ’sexual offender’ may only apply to offenders who commit sexual offenses against minors does not change the fact that the definition provided in the statute, and not the definition that Rainer wishes to impose upon the statute, controls,” the court’s majority said.

Two judges in dissent wrote that, because registration limits where offenders may live, work and congregate, it “is not a requirement that should be imposed cavalierly.”

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