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Au pair charged in double homicide pleads guilty to manslaughter
Court News |
2024/11/03 06:11
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A Brazilian au pair who fell in love with an IRS agent pleaded guilty to manslaughter on Tuesday in what prosecutors say was an elaborate double-murder scheme to frame another man in the stabbing of his wife.
For months after the killings on Feb. 24, 2023, it might have seemed as if Juliana Peres Magalhães and the IRS agent, Brendan Banfield, got away with murders, according to new details prosecutors revealed in court to support her guilty plea.
Christine Banfield, a pediatric intensive care nurse with a 4-year-old daughter, had been mortally wounded with stab wounds to her neck, and Brendan Banfield, her husband, and their live-in nanny both said they shot her apparent killer — a man who had been lured to the bedroom with promises of rough sex.
Magalhães had called 911 to the house in Herndon, Virginia, and was hyperventilating at the scene as she described the killings. Detectives weren’t buying it — but it took time to build their case. Meanwhile, the live-in au pair moved into the primary bedroom with Banfield and posted photos of them as a couple, authorities said. When she was arrested in October 2023, a picture of herself with Brendan Banfield was on the nightstand.
As she remained in jail for more than a year thereafter, she declined to say anything more.
A long-awaited forensics report on the blood spatter evidence then came in, and prosecutors said it showed that Brendan Banfield had smeared blood from Christine Banfield’s wounds onto the body of Joe Ryan, the man they had tried to frame for stabbing her. Authorities arrested Brendan Banfield in September on charges of aggravated murder.
Banfield’s lawyer, John F. Carroll, said in court before he was denied bail in September that the evidence “just doesn’t add up” to him killing his wife.
In October, Magalhães agreed to cooperate with the police in her second interview since the day of the crime. Days later, on Tuesday, two weeks before she was scheduled to go to trial on charges of second-degree murder and felony firearm use, Magalhães pleaded guilty to Ryan’s killing, saying she had agreed to help the husband’s ruse to kill the wife and make it look like they both shot a predator.
“Are you entering your guilty plea because you are in fact guilty of this offense?” Chief Judge Penney Azcarate asked Magalhães before accepting her plea to a single count of manslaughter, reduced from murder and a firearm offense.
“Yes,” she replied, softly.
The sentencing of Magalhães, who was raised in the outskirts of Sao Paulo, now awaits the conclusion of Brendan Banfield’s trial. Depending on her cooperation with authorities, attorneys said in court that they may agree for her to be sentenced to the time she’s already served.
“Much of the information that led to this agreement cannot be made public at this time, due to the upcoming criminal trial against the other defendant in this matter,” Fairfax County Commonwealth’s Attorney Steve Descano said.
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A man who threatened to kill Democratic election officials pleads guilty
Court News |
2024/10/29 08:46
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A Colorado man repeatedly made online threats about killing the top elections officials in his state and Arizona — both Democrats — as well as a judge and law enforcement agents, according to a guilty plea he entered Wednesday.
Teak Ty Brockbank, 45, acknowledged to a federal judge in Denver that his comments were made “out of fear, hate and anger,” as he sat dressed in a khaki jail uniform before pleading guilty to one count of transmitting interstate threats. He faces up to five years in prison when he’s sentenced on Feb. 3.
Brockbank’s case is the 16th conviction secured by the Justice Department’s Election Threats Task Force, which Attorney General Merrick Garland formed in 2021 to combat the rise of threats targeting the election community.
Earlier this year, French actor Judith Godrèche called on France’s film industry to “face the truth” on sexual violence and physical abuse during the Cesar Awards ceremony, France’s version of the Oscars. “We can decide that men accused of rape no longer rule the (French) cinema,” Godrèche said.
“As we approach Election Day, the Justice Department’s warning remains clear: anyone who illegally threatens an election worker, official, or volunteer will face the consequences,” Garland said in a statement.
Brockbank did not elaborate Wednesday on the threats he made, and court documents outlining the plea agreement were not immediately made public. His lawyer Thomas Ward declined to comment after the hearing.
However, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for Colorado said in statement that the plea agreement included the threats Brockbank made against the election officials — identified in evidence as Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold and former Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, now the state’s governor.
Griswold has been outspoken nationally on elections security and has received threats in the past over her insistence that the 2020 election was secure. Her office says she has gotten more frequent and more violent threats since September 2023, when a group of voters filed a lawsuit attempting to remove former President Donald Trump from Colorado’s primary ballot.
“I refuse to be intimidated and will continue to make sure every eligible Republican, Democrat, and Unaffiliated voter can make their voices heard in our elections,” Griswold said in a statement issued after Brockbank’s plea.
Investigators say Brockbank began to express the view that violence against public officials was necessary in late 2021. According to a detention motion, Brockbank told investigators after his arrest that he’s not a “vigilante” and hoped his posts would simply “wake people up.” He has been jailed since his Aug. 23 arrest in Cortez, Colorado.
Brockbank criticized the government’s response to Tina Peters, a former Colorado county clerk convicted this year for allowing a breach of her election system inspired by false claims about election fraud in the 2020 presidential race, according to court documents. He also was upset in December 2023 after a divided Colorado Supreme Court removed Trump from the state’s presidential primary ballot.
In one social media post in August 2022, referring to Griswold and Hobbs, Brockbank said: “Once those people start getting put to death then the rest will melt like snowflakes and turn on each other,” according to copies of the threats included in court documents. In September 2021, Brockbank said Griswold needed to “hang by the neck till she is Dead Dead Dead,” saying he and other “every day people” needed to hold her and others accountable, prosecutors said.
Brockbank also posted in October 2021 that he could use his rifle to “put a bullet” in the head of a state judge who had overseen Brockbank’s probation for his fourth conviction for driving under the influence, under the plea agreement, prosecutors said.
Prosecutors say Brockbank also acknowledged posting in July 2022 that he would shoot without warning any federal agent who showed up at his house. Prosecutors earlier said in court documents that a half dozen firearms were found in his home after his arrest, including a loaded one near his front door, even though he can’t legally possess firearms due to a felony conviction of attempted theft by receiving stolen property in Utah in 2002.
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Georgia Supreme Court restores near-ban on abortions while state appeals
Court News |
2024/10/09 11:37
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The Georgia Supreme Court on Monday halted a ruling striking down the state’s near-ban on abortions while it considers the state’s appeal.
The high court’s order came a week after a judge found that Georgia unconstitutionally prohibits abortions beyond about six weeks of pregnancy, often before women realize they’re pregnant. Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney ruled Sept. 30 that privacy rights under Georgia’s state constitution include the right to make personal healthcare decisions.
The state Supreme Court put McBurney’s ruling on hold at the request of Republican state Attorney General Chris Carr, whose office is appealing.
In a dissenting opinion, Justice John J. Ellington argued that the case “should not be predetermined in the State’s favor before the appeal is even docketed.”
“The State should not be in the business of enforcing laws that have been determined to violate fundamental rights guaranteed to millions of individuals under the Georgia Constitution,” Ellington wrote. “The `status quo’ that should be maintained is the state of the law before the challenged laws took effect.”
Clare Bartlett, executive director of the Georgia Life Alliance, called high court’s decision “appropriate,” fearing that without it, women from other states would begin coming to Georgia for surgical abortions.
“There’s no there’s no right to privacy in the abortion process because there’s another individual involved,” Bartlett said. She added: “It goes back to protecting those who are the most vulnerable and can’t speak for themselves.”
Monica Simpson, executive director of SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective, said the state Supreme Court had “sided with anti-abortion extremists.” Her group is among the plaintiffs challenging the state law.
“Every minute this harmful six-week abortion ban is in place, Georgians suffer,” Simpson said in a statement. “Denying our community members the lifesaving care they deserve jeopardizes their lives, safety, and health — all for the sake of power and control over our bodies.”
Leaders of carafem, an Atlanta abortion provider that had planned to expand its services after McBurney’s ruling, expressed dismay at the law’s reinstatement.
“Carafem will continue to offer abortion services following the letter of the law,” said Melissa Grant, the provider’s chief operating officer. “But we remain angry and disappointed and hope that eventually people will come back to a more sensible point of view on this issue that aligns with the people who need care.”
Georgia’s law, signed by Republican Gov. Brian Kemp in 2019, was one of a wave of restrictive abortion measures that took effect in Republican-controlled states after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022 and ended a national right to abortion. It prohibited most abortions once a “detectable human heartbeat” was present. At around six weeks into a pregnancy, cardiac activity can be detected by ultrasound in an embryo’s cells that will eventually become the heart.
Georgia has a separate criminal law that makes illegal abortions punishable by up to 10 years in prison for providers, but not for women having abortions. In addition, the 2019 ban puts physicians at risk of losing their medical licenses if they perform unpermitted abortions.
The Georgia Supreme Court’s one-page order Monday exempted one specific provision of the state’s abortion law from being reinstated.
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New rules regarding election certification in Georgia to get test in court
Court News |
2024/09/30 07:32
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Two controversial new rules passed by Georgia’s State Election Board concerning the certification of vote tallies are set to face their first test in court this week.
The Republican majority on the State Election Board — made up of three members praised by former President Donald Trump praised by name at a recent rally — voted to approve the rules last month. Democrats filed a legal challenge and argue the rules could be used “to upend the statutorily required process for certifying election results in Georgia.”
A bench trial, meaning there is a judge but no jury, is set to begin Tuesday before Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney.
One of the rules provides a definition of certification that includes requiring county officials to conduct a “reasonable inquiry” before certifying results, but it does not specify what that means. The other includes language allowing county election officials “to examine all election related documentation created during the conduct of elections.”
A series of recent appointments means Trump-endorsed Republicans have had a 3-2 majority on the State Election Board since May. That majority has passed several new rules over the past two months that have caused worry among Democrats and others who believe Trump and his allies may use them to cause confusion and cast doubt on the results if he loses this crucial swing state to Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris in November’s presidential election.
Another rule the board passed more recently requires that poll workers count the number of paper ballots — not votes — by hand on election night after voting ends. A separate lawsuit filed by a group headed by a former Republican lawmaker initially challenged the two certification rules but was amended last week to also challenge the ballot counting rule and some others that the board passed.
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and an association of county election officials had cautioned the state board against passing new rules so close to the election. They argued it could cause confusion among poll workers and voters and undermine public trust in the voting process.
The challenge to the certification rules filed by Democratic groups and others asks the judge to confirm that election superintendents — a multi-person election board in most counties — have a duty to certify an election by the deadline provided in the law and have no discretion to withhold or delay certification. They ask that it should be declared invalid if the judge believes either of the rules allows such discretion.
Lawyers for the State Election Board argue the Democrats are asking the judge to “declare what is already enshrined in Georgia law,” that county certification is mandatory and must occur by 5 p.m. the Monday after the election, or the next day if Monday is a holiday, as it is this year. They also argue the challenge is barred by the principle of sovereign immunity and seeks relief that isn’t appropriate under the law.
The challenge was filed by the state and national Democratic parties, as well as county election board members from counties in metro Atlanta, most chosen by the local Democratic Party, as well voters who support Democrats and two Democratic state lawmakers running for reelection. It was filed against the State Election Board, and the state and national Republican parties joined the fight on the board’s side.
The Democrats concede in their challenge that the two rules “could be read not to conflict with Georgia statutes” but they argue “that is not what the drafters of those rules intended.”
“According to their drafters, these rules rest on the assumption that certification of election results by a county board is discretionary and subject to free-ranging inquiry that may delay certification or render it wholly optional,” they wrote in a court filing.
They also note that numerous county election officials around the state have already sought to block or delay certification in recent elections and “the new rules hand those officials new tools to do so again in November.”
State lawyers argue that since the argument against the rules is based on the alleged intent of the people who presented them or the way some officials could interpret them, rather than on the text of the rules themselves, the challenge should be thrown out.
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A man who attacked a Nevada judge in court pleads guilty but mentally ill
Court News |
2024/09/05 08:14
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A man whose courtroom attack on a judge in Las Vegas was recorded on video has pleaded guilty but mentally ill to attempted murder and other charges.
Deobra Delone Redden ended his trial Thursday after Clark County District Court Judge Mary Kay Holthus testified that she feared for her life when Redden vaulted over her bench and desk and landed on her. The attack happened Jan. 3 as Holthus was about to deliver Redden’s sentence in a separate felony attempted battery case.
Redden’s defense attorney, Carl Arnold, said in a statement Friday that the plea “reflects a delicate balance between accepting responsibility for a regrettable incident and recognizing the impact of Mr. Redden’s untreated mental illness at the time.”
Arnold told jurors who began hearing evidence on Tuesday that Redden had not taken prescribed medication to control his diagnosed schizophrenia. Holthus testified that she felt “defenseless” during the attack and that court officials and attorneys who came to her aid saved her life, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported.
Law clerk Michael Lasso told the jury he saw Holthus’ head hit the floor and Redden grab her hair. “I absolutely thought, ‘He’s going to kill her,’” Lasso testified. He said he wrestled Redden away, punched him to try to subdue him and saw Redden hitting a corrections officer who also intervened.
An armed courtroom marshal suffered a bleeding gash on his forehead and a dislocated shoulder, according to court officials and witnesses. Holthus was not hospitalized and returned to work after treatment for her injuries. A prosecutor for more than 27 years, she was elected to the state court bench in 2018.
Redden, 31, is already serving prison time for other felony battery convictions. Prosecutor John Giordani said Friday he could face up to 86 years for his pleas to eight felonies, which also included battery of a protected person age 60 or older resulting in substantial bodily harm, intimidating a public officer and battery by a prisoner.
Clark County District Court Judge Susan Johnson ruled that Redden was competent and capable of entering his plea, the Review-Journal reported. Sentencing was scheduled for Nov. 7.
Arnold said in his statement that he will ask Johnson to order mental health treatment for his client behind bars.
Giordani said Redden told three correctional staff members after the attack that he tried to kill Holthus.
“While he clearly has past mental issues, he made a choice that day and failed to control his homicidal impulses,” the prosecutor said. |
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