A family court judge shown beating his teenage daughter in a viral YouTube video was unapologetic Thursday, accusing his daughter of using her “disability” for sympathy and posting the graphic footage to exact revenge because he threatened to take her Mercedes away.
Hillary Adams was also talking, appearing on NBC’s Today show with her mother, who said she too was abused. Hillary Adams continued to use social media Thursday, tweeting that her father had cut off her cellphone.
Also Thursday, Rockport Police Chief Tim Jayroe said Aransas County Court-at-Law Judge William Adams won’t face charges in the 2004 beating of this then-16-year-old daughter Hillary because the five-year statute of limitations has expired.
Had the incident come to light sooner, Adams likely would have been charged with causing injury to a child or other assault-related offenses, Jayroe said.
“We believe that there was a criminal offense involved and that there was substantial evidence to indicate that, and under normal circumstances … a charge could have been made,” Jayroe said.
For two months, Kansas City used 24-hour cameras to track one of its own municipal judges. The city even used private investigators to follow her.
In the end, the city concluded that Elena Franco is not a resident of Kansas City, no matter what she has said.
Franco spent far more time at her husband’s residence outside Kansas City than at her home within city limits, violating the city’s residency rule, according to an internal auditor’s investigative report.
“Her actions are consistent with a judge wanting to reside in a location that violated the Charter and her oath of office, but desired to obtain and retain a position on the bench,” internal auditor Roy Greenway wrote.
Franco, who has been suspended from her position without pay pending the outcome of a residency inquiry, said in a statement Thursday that she has “presented overwhelming evidence” that she is a resident of the city.
A Texas judge is receiving death threats and is the subject of a police investigation after his daughter posted a video of him beating her with a belt on YouTube.
A judge in Texas is facing both a police investigation and the court of public opinion this week after video of him beating his disabled daughter with a belt went viral.
Hillary Adams, now 23, was 16 in 2004 when she secretly recorded her father, William Adams, lashing her back and legs 17 times with a belt and threatening to beat her “into submission”, while her mother yells at her to “take it” “like a grown woman” as she cries. The beating was ostensibly because Hillary had been caught by her parents downloading pirated content on her computer. Hillary, who suffers from ataxic cerebral palsy, told The Associated Press that she posted the nearly 8-minute video on YouTube last week not out of revenge, but because she hoped that it would make her father seek help – and because he continues to harass her.
William, an Aransas County Court judge who, ironically and not a little sadly, handles child abuse cases, defended himself to Corpus Christi’s KZTV; he said that Hillary is angry at him because he “ordered her to bring the car back” and adding that his “life’s been made very difficult over this child”. Said William, “In my mind I have not done anything wrong other than discipline my child when she was caught stealing. I did lose my temper, I’ve apologized… it looks worse than it is.”
The family of an EMT who died when his medical services helicopter crashed say their attorneys should forfeit their $5.2 million in legal fees because they won the case by bribing a state judge. One attorney, who is a former state representative, and the judge have both pleaded guilty to corruption charges.
Michael Sanchez and his co-worker Raul Garcia died onboard a chopper that crashed in the Laguna Madre near South Padre Island on Feb. 5, 2008.
The Sanchez and Garcia families hired attorneys Marc Rosenthal and Jose Solis to represent them, and the lawyers sued Metro Aviation and South Texas Emergency Foundation in Cameron County Court.
The case was assigned to 404th Cameron County District Court, where Abel Limas was presiding judge at the time, according to the complaint.
Limas and Solis have both pleaded guilty to corruption charges. Solis is a former state representative.
A former Texas state representative pleaded guilty to aiding and abetting extortion by a state judge, who accepted bribes from attorneys for favorable rulings. Jose Solis admitted he bribed state Judge Abel Limas with $8,000, which they referred to as eight “golf balls.”
Jose Santiago “Jim” Solis, 47, of Harlingen, pleaded guilty to a one-count criminal information before U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen, in Brownsville.
Limas pleaded guilty in March to one count of racketeering. He faces up to 20 years in prison.
Solis, a personal injury attorney, represented District 38 in the Texas House for seven terms before retiring from the Legislature in 2007.
At his hearing on Friday, Solis helping Limas use his judgeship of the 404th District Court as a criminal enterprise to enrich himself through extortion.
Prosecutors said Limas accepted money and other stuff from attorneys in civil cases, including Solis, in return for favorable pre-trial rulings.
Solis admitted paying Limas $8,000 in May 2008 in a case involving a helicopter crash at South Padre Island.
As part of his plea agreement, Solis agreed to forfeit $250,000 to the government. Sentencing is set before Hanen on Aug. 1. Solis was expected to be released on bond pending the sentencing hearing.
(CN) – eBay is off the hook on claims that it deceived customers by allowing counterfeit Tiffany jewelry to be sold on its website, a federal judge in Manhattan ruled.
The famous jeweler claimed that hundreds of thousands of counterfeit Tiffany silver jewelry items were offered for sale on eBay from 2003 to 2006.
U.S. District Judge Richard J. Sullivan dismissed most of Tiffany & Co.’s claims in 2008, saying the case centered on who should bear the burden of policing valuable trademarks online.
The 2nd Circuit upheld most of Sullivan’s opinion, but sent part of the case back to the federal judge to re-examine Tiffany’s false advertising claim, which was based on the claim that eBay advertised selling Tiffany goods on its website, despite knowing that “a substantial portion” of the merchandise was counterfeit.
“Although eBay was aware that a portion of the Tiffany’s goods sold on its website were counterfeit, nothing in the record indicates that eBay was aware that consumers were being misled by eBay advertisements,” Sullivan determined on remand.
Sullivan found “insufficient evidence in the extensive trial record” to back up Tiffany’s post-appeal argument.
“Plaintiffs cite only three categories of evidence as proof that customers were actually misled by eBay’s advertisements,” the judge wrote. “The declarations of three eBay customers who believed that they bought counterfeit Tiffany goods on eBay, testimony from a Tiffany employee that Tiffany had received numerous emails complaining of counterfeit Tiffany goods of eBay, and 125 emails sent by customers to eBay complaining of counterfeit Tiffany goods.
“Even this evidence – deficient as it is to show the effect of the advertisements on consumers in general – does not reveal that any consumer was misled by eBay’s advertisements (emphasis in original).
LOS ANGELES — A judge on Friday dismissed a lawsuit that accused Dole Food Co. of making payments to illegal far-right Colombian militias that killed thousands of people in banana-growing regions, the company said.
The lawsuit claimed Dole paid some $10 million to the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, or AUC, with the intention of “keeping unions out of Dole’s banana plantations by murdering effective union leaders and using terror tactics to discourage workers from joining the unions.”
It was filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court in April 2009 on behalf of 185 Colombians who are relatives of 51 men allegedly killed by an AUC militia.
A key witness for the plaintiffs was the jailed AUC commander named Jose Gregorio Mangones who demobilized as part of a peace deal with Colombia’s government and who has acknowledged responsibility for more than half the killings cited inthe lawsuit, said plaintiffs’ attorney Terry Collingsworth.
Dole had denied the allegations from the outset, calling them “blatantly false.”
“It was based on the self-motivated declaration of a convicted Colombian terrorist in the custody of the Colombian government,” C. Michael Carter, Dole’s executive vice president and general counsel, said in a written statement Friday.
Collingsworth said he plans to file the case again in federal court.
His lawsuit accused the Westlake Village-based Dole of making payments from 1997 to 2007 to local AUC commanders and previously paying smaller far-right militias.
NORWICH, Conn. — A man accused of kidnapping his estranged wife in May before leading police on a 50-mile chase appeared in court Wednesday on new charges.
Police said Eric Stiggle was arrested after attempting to skip bond.
Norwich officers took Stiggle into custody Tuesday night in Norwich and he is now charged with three counts of failure to appear.
“Can I say something, your honor,” he said. “I turned myself in.”
Prosecutors said he used a bogus letter to convince a bondsman to post his more than $1.3 million bail Monday. Police said the bond letter he gave the bail bondsman claiming he had hundreds of thousands of dollars came from a Norwich attorney who died earlier this year.
Stiggle’s new bond was set at $2.5 million.
“Me and my father was having dinner,” Stiggle said. “I was going to turn myself in to Norwich police. I wasn’t going to run.”
Police said Stiggle stabbed his wife, Sara DeCoster, 31, multiple times on May 30 before kidnapping her. Neighbors reported seeing a woman wrapped in a blanket tossed into a white Toyota SUV.
Stiggle crashed the car in Chatham, N.Y., during a chase that began in Holyoke, Mass. DeCoster survived.
He later mistakenly turned in Rhodes’ fingerprints as part of a burglary investigation, the ruling states.
Arlington police had to investigate Rhodes for breaking into the apartment, though one officer allegedly “informed Rhodes that he did not believe that Rhodes had committed the burglary,” according to the ruling.
Rhodes was placed on paid administrative leave during the investigation, which eventually cleared him of any wrongdoing.
He sued the city, Prince and four officers over the incident. The bulk of his claims and appeals were dismissed, leaving only his claim that the city had violated the Texas Tort Claims Act.
Judge Fitzwater declined to exercise his discretionary jurisdiction over the remaining claim, explaining that the case involved the sticky state-law question of “tangible personal property.”
WASHINGTON – A federal judge from Louisiana is corrupt and unfit to serve on the bench, House members said Monday as they began a rare congressional impeachment trial by laying out their case against the jurist.
Playing the role of prosecutors, Reps. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., and Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., used their opening statements to a Senate impeachment panel to outline what they called a decades-long pattern of unethical behavior by New Orleans-area U.S. District Judge G. Thomas Porteous. They said that included taking cash, expensive meals and other gifts from lawyers and a bail bondsman, lying to Congress and filing for bankruptcy under a false name.
“It is the unanimous view of the House of Representatives that his conduct is not only wrong but so violative of the public trust that he cannot be allowed to remain on the bench without making a mockery of the court system,” Schiff said.
Porteous’ attorney, Jonathan Turley, denied some allegations but acknowledged others such as accepting meals, which he said is perfectly legal. He said the judge’s behavior, while perhaps reflecting poor judgment at times, doesn’t meet the high crimes and misdemeanors standard set in the Constitution for impeachment.
“Judge Porteous has never been indicted, let alone convicted, of any crime,” Turley said. “What the Congress has impeached this judge for is an appearance of impropriety.”
For the second time in two weeks, a Washington County Circuit Court judge has recused himself from hearing pretrial motions in the case of a local bail bondsman indicted on explosives, firearms and drug charges.
“I will err on the side of caution and recuse myself,” Circuit Judge W. Kennedy Boone III said Tuesday before the hearing on defense motions began.
Gregory Lehman Toms, 54, asked that Boone not hear the arguments because of comments the judge has made about Toms’ bail bonds business in the past, Boone said.
The hearing was postponed Aug. 9 because Circuit Judge Daniel P. Dwyer recused himself, citing “reasons personal to me and my family.”
Boone said Circuit Judge John H. McDowell cannot hear arguments on the motions because he signed the search warrant for Toms’ property. That leaves Circuit Judge M. Kenneth Long Jr. or Circuit Judge Donald E. Beachley to preside over the hearing when it is rescheduled.
Assistant State’s Attorney Michele Hansen said Toms’ attorney, Gregory Bannon, previously agreed to have Boone hear the motions.
Boone said he has made comments from the bench about Toms’ business, but characterized them as innocuous. The judge said he has had no dealings with Toms outside of his profession as a bail bondsman, although he does know Toms’ brother.
A court hearing in a case against a local bail bondsman was postponed Monday when a judge recused himself due to a conflict of interest.
Washington County Circuit Judge Daniel P. Dwyer said he could not hear the case against Gregory Lehman Toms “for reasons personal to me and my family.”
Toms, 54, of 19932 Lemuel Lane in Boonsboro, was indicted in June on charges of possession of an explosive/incendiary device with intent to create a destruction device, possession of black powder in excess of 5 pounds, transporting a handgun in a vehicle, possession of a stolen firearm, theft of less than $1,000 and possession of marijuana, according to Washington County Circuit Court records.
The indictment came as the result of a search of Toms’ home on June 2, Cpl. Greg Alton of the Washington County Sheriff’s Department has said.
The case was scheduled for a hearing Monday on motions by the defendant to suppress evidence and to dismiss the charges of explosive device possession, black powder possession and transporting a handgun in a vehicle, court records show.
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