The federal judge who ruled California's Proposition 8 unconstitutional will be speaking today at Gonzaga Law School.

Retired U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker will be discussing cameras in the courtroom in a lecture titled  “Hauptmann’s Ghost.”

“The lecture’s title refers to the media frenzy surrounding the trial of Richard Hauptmann, who was convicted of kidnapping and killing the Lindbergh baby in 1932,” according to a news release. “The subject of media in the courtroom is an ongoing controversy in the federal courts.”

The lecture, part of the annual Justin L. Quackenbush Lecture series, begins at 5:30 p.m. in the Barbieri Courtroom at the Gonzaga University School of Law.

A Spokane man could serve his sentence on home dention after pelading guilty Wednesday to threatening a Colorado doctor who offers late-term abortions three weeks after the killing of a Kansas doctor who also provided the procedure, according to a plea agreement.

Donald Hertz, 70, pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Spokane to one count of violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act and one count of transmitting a threat in interstate commerce.

The charges carry up to six years in federal prison and up to $350,000 fine at his Oct. 27 sentencing, but the plea agreement says prosecutors won’t oppose Hertz’s request to serve an incarceration sentence in home detention.

Hertz admitted that he intentionally intimidated Dr. William Hern of the Boulder Abortion Clinic and his employees. According to court records, Hertz contacted the clinic and stated that two of his associates were driving to Boulder, Colo., to kill members of the doctor’s family.

Hertz made the threat just after the May 2009 killing of Dr. George Tiller, a Wichita, Kan., physician who was one of a few doctors in the nation who performed late-term abortions.

“The defendant’s conviction should sent a clear message to others who would carry out similar criminal acts that they will be brought to justice and held accountable for their actions,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Thomas E. Perez said in a news release.

Past coverage:

Aug. 28, 2009:  Threat to abortion doctor may have stemmed from news article

A B.C. woman is due in federal court in Spokane today after being arrested at the United States border at Oroville last week with nearly $150,000 in unreported cash.

Marina Cantarero-Cruz, 48, was driving a 2004 Acura when border agents discovered a secret compartment July 14 about 2:10 p.m.

Cantarero-Cruz, of Oliver, B.C, and two passengers had said they were traveling to the Rancho Chico restaurant in Tonasket and had denied transporting more than $10,000, according to court documents.

A K-9 dog detected the cash in the compartment, documents allege.

Agents seized $132,980 in U.S. cash and $12,200 in Canadian cash. An additional $2,100 in U.S. currency and $870 in Canadian was falling out of her underwear, documents allege.

Her bail hearing for a cash smuggling charge is set for today at 3 p.m. She remains in Spokane County Jail.

A former North Idaho resident has been charged with federal tax evasion.

Michael George Fitzpatrick is accused of using offshore bank accounts to hide his assets and of failing to file individual income tax returns in 2003 and 2004.

He also allegedly didn’t filed corporate income tax returns in 2004 for the Washington corporation Dynamic Solutions, and a Nevada corporation, NAES.

Both companies claimed to allow people “to completely eliminate their credit card debt and other types of debt,” according to the U.S. Department of Justice.

Fitzpatrick, a former resident of Sandpoint and Hope, as well as Kent, Wash., is charged with two counts of tax evasion and two counts of failure to file a tax return, according to a grand jury indictment filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Boise.

Tax evasion carries a maximum of 5 years in prison; failure to file brings a maximum of one year.

A Spokane man accused of threatening to kill family members of a Colorado abortion doctor is scheduled to plead guilty to federal charges.

Donald Hertz, 70, is scheduled to enter the plea on April 5. He was too ill to attend a plea hearing that had been scheduled today in Denver, according to court documents.

Hertz is required to attend the court hearings in person after a judge denied his request to transfer to the case to Eastern Washington District Court. His doctors have written letters saying that travel and Colorado’s high elevation could be hazardous to Hertz’s ongoing medical issues.

Hertz was charged in August for a phone call authorities say he made on June 23 to the Boulder Abortion Clinic that threatened members of Dr. Warren Hern’s family. Hern is a friend of slain abortion doctor George Tiller.

Two days before Hertz allegedly made the threats, The Spokesman-Review ran a front page story detailing Hern’s late-term abortion practice and the increase in business he’s seen since Tiller’s murder.

Hertz is charged with making an interstate threat and violating a 1994 law that protects access to reproductive health services. He faces up to six years in prison.

Past coverage:

Spokane man accused of threatening Colorado abortion doctor

The second trial of a former Shoshone County doctor accused of overprescribing drugs is set to begin this week in U.S. District Court in Coeur d’Alene.

Christopher Arthur Christensen faces three counts of prescribing methadone, hydrocodone and/or alprazolam, an anti-anxiety drug, “outside the scope of professional practice and not for a legitimate medical purpose” for incidents between Dec. 28, 2000 and Jan. 12, 2001.

Christensen had been indicted on additional counts relating to the care of at least five patients, including a Mullan, Idaho man who died in February 2001 after taking a mixture of methadone and alprazolam.

A North Idaho jury acquitted Christensen on six counts in June after a federal trial but couldn’t reach a verdict on 12 counts.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office dismissed all but the three counts Christensen faces at trial this week.

Federal prosecutors will call four witnesses, including the case investigator for Idaho State Police and a former employee of Christensen’s, according to a trial briefing filed last week.

Also expected to testify is ISP Detective Beth Bradbury, who posed as a patient visiting Christensen during the investigation, and Dr. Arthur Jordan, an experts on the drugs Christensen is accused of overprescribing.

Christensen’s attorney, David E. Dokken, of Lewiston, plans to call Dr. Jon Hillyer, of Bremerton, Wash., and former patients of Christensen’s.

“Certainly, the defendant in no way acted as a ‘pusher,’” according to a trial briefing prepared by Dokken. “…He was a thorough and competent doctor who passionately pursued his practice.”

Christensen had a practice in Victor, Mont, as of May 2009, but it’s unclear if it’s still open.

Columnist Doug Clark’s annual Budnick awards were a fun reminder of the odd stories that made news in 2009.

He mentioned one case that deserves an update - that of former Bonner County sheriff’s Deputy James M. Sebero, who pleaded guilty in April to charges relating to him lying about being paralyzed and defrauding the federal government out of more than $1.5 million in benefits.

Sebero was sentenced in November to 15 months in prison and ordered to forfeit $950,000. He was ordered to report to prison at a date determined by the probation office, and he’s not in custody, according to the federal inmate locator.

Sebero claimed to be paraplegic after serving in the Air Force in the 1970s, according to indictments filed last year in Idaho and Eastern Washington federal courts.

The scheme fell apart after federal agents investigating Sebero for fraudulently performing annual inspections on airplanes learned he’d been receiving VA benefits since 1976, a year after he ended a six-year stint in the Air Force at Fairchild Air Force Base.

In September 2007, more than a year before he was indicted on charges related to the VA fraud, investigators secretly videotaped Sebero being examined at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in northwest Spokane. He used a wheelchair then, but government surveillance cameras showed him walking in and out of the U.S. Courthouse downtown the next day, according to previously published reports.

Read past coverage here.

A drug runner arrested in the investigation of a smuggling ring that used helicopters to fly marijuana, cocaine and other narcotics throughout the region was sentenced during a secret proceeding Wednesday in federal court, his attorney said.

The courtroom was closed and the transcript will be sealed under orders from U.S. District Judge Lonny Suko. No reason for the unusual closure was given.

Leonard J. Ferris, 50, pleaded guilty in April after being charged with conspiracy to distribute cocaine. He was planning to exchange the cocaine for marijuana in the Colville National Forest when he and Ross N. Legge, 53, were arrested near Ogden, Utah, on Feb. 21, according to court documents.

Legge is awaiting trial in federal court in Utah.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office wanted Ferris to serve at least 17 years in prison, according to a sentencing memorandum filed Nov. 25.

Read the rest of my story

Kevin J. Still, 44, (left) and Sonya K. Symons,

31, (right) were arrested last week by members of the federal Drug Enforcement Agency and the Tri-City Metro Drug Task Force on federal charges of criminal conspiracy to distribute narcotics. Also arrested in Spokane was Troy Green, 29.

The U.S attorney’s office in Spokane moved for them to be released at a hearing in U.S District Court today. Judge Cynthia Imbrogno agreed. They were released by 3 p.m. today, according to jail records.

The three must have no contact with each other, take random drug tests, remain in Eastern Washington, undergo substance abuse counseling and refrain from “excessive use of alcohol,” according to release conditions filed today.

Court documents allege the Symons and Still wanted to start selling large quantities of marijuana and started working on the plan with a former jail inmate who turned out to be a confidential informant.

Their arrests on Thursday came after Still and Green gave an undercover DEA agent $15,000 for 12 pounds of marijuana, with the agreement that they’d pay another $15,000 later, according to the documents.

The allegations connect Green to a major drug ring busted in February. Read a previous blog post here.

Two Franklin County corrections officers are due in federal court in Spokane Wednesday for a bail hearing on drug charges.

Kevin J. Still, 44, (left) and Sonya K. Symons, 31, (right) were arrested Thursday by members of the federal Drug Enforcement Agency and the Tri-City Metro Drug Task Force on federal charges of criminal conspiracy to distribute narcotics.

Still, a 21-year county corrections veteran, was arrested in Spokane while Symons, a 6-year veteran, was arrested at their Pasco home. Franklin County Sheriff Richard Lathim said the two have been suspended without pay pending termination, according to the Associated Press.

Also arrested in Spokane was Troy Green, 29. All three are in Spokane County Jail. Court documents allege the Symons and Still wanted to start selling large quantities of marijuana and started working on the plan with a jail inmate who turned out to be a confidential informant.

Their arrests on Thursday came after Still and Green gave an undercover DEA agent $15,000 for 12 pounds of marijuana, with the agreement that they’d pay another $15,000 later, according to the documents.

The allegations connect Green to a major drug ring busted in February. (Read more about the bust, called Operation Green Tree, here.)

“Still and Symons told CS1 that they wanted to find a new source of supply for themselves and Green who had recently lost his source of supply in Spokane, Washington, due to law enforcement activities,” according to the complaint. “Still and Symons told CS1 (a confidential informant) that Green’s previous source of supply was a Drug Trafficking Organization made up of mostly Vietnamese Americans.”

A woman and her boyfriend who bought a trip to the Super Bowl and other luxury items with more than $800,000 in embezzled funds from a Spokane business will spend time in prison.

Michelle A. Wing, 34, will spend more than six years in a federal prison after pleading guilty to six county of bank fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit fraud, a judge ruled this morning.

Kenneth A. Marsh, 40, was sentenced to 14 months in prison and a year probation last week after pleading guilty to two counts of filing a false income tax return.

Wing, who will be on probation for five years, was ordered to pay more than $755,000 in restitution and Marsh more than $165,000 for money they stole from Centaur, which provided administrative services to two advertising companies, E. Media and Power Marketing Services.

Wing was hired as Centaur’s bookkeeper in April 2006 after working as a temporary employee since Dec. 2005.

She and Marsh used fraudulently opened credit cards to pay for Hawaii vacations, jewelry, private school tuition and plane tickets. Wing forged the signatures of Centaur owners to pay the bills, according to federal court documents.

The scheme fell apart when an accountant noticed the checks.

The two were charged in November. Read Bill Morlin’s story on their arrest here.