Nation in brief: O.J. wants ‘95 trial kept out of court
O.J. Simpson wants a judge to bar any mention of the former football star’s 1995 acquittal in the slayings of his former wife and her friend when he stands trial on kidnapping and armed robbery charges, his attorney said Friday.
“We don’t want the state to be able to bring that up at all,” attorney Gabriel Grasso said. “That’s not part of this case.”
Grasso also filed court papers seeking the dismissal of half the 12 charges against Simpson, saying prosecutors in Nevada failed to meet legal standards to prosecute him.
“They’re charging O.J. with … the specific intent to commit robbery,” Grasso said, citing Nevada law underlying the felony charge of robbery. “He wasn’t stealing from somebody else. He was taking back something that was his.”
Simpson, 60, is accused of leading five other men in a gunpoint robbery of two memorabilia dealers who were peddling collectibles associated with Simpson.
Milwaukee
Nun gets year in jail for abuse in 1960s
A 79-year-old nun was sentenced Friday to one year in a county jail for sexually abusing two teens when she was their principal four decades ago.
Sister Norma Giannini avoided a trial by pleading no contest in November to two felony counts of indecent behavior with a child.
“I ask forgiveness from the bottom of my heart,” she told Circuit Judge M. Joseph Donald at her sentencing.
One of Giannini’s accusers, James St. Patrick, 55, of Belgium, Wis., asked Donald to impose a longer sentence. After the hearing, he said he was angry.
“When are we going to start dealing with female rapists and give them the same sentence as male rapists?” he asked.
The other accuser, Gerald Kobs, also 55, sobbed as he told the judge the abuse left him suicidal and emotionally withdrawn.
They told authorities they had dozens of sexual encounters with Giannini, including intercourse, while attending St. Patrick’s School in Milwaukee during the 1960s, according to a criminal complaint. Giannini taught eighth grade and served as principal at the school.
Washington
Reporter’s sources in CIA book sought
A federal grand jury has subpoenaed a reporter for the New York Times in an apparent attempt to force him to disclose his sources in a 2006 book on the CIA, a lawyer for the reporter said.
Attorney David N. Kelley said the subpoena issued last week seeks the source of information for a chapter of James Risen’s book “State of War” regarding CIA efforts to sabotage the Iranian nuclear program.
Risen plans to fight the subpoena, Kelley said. The reporter has been ordered to appear before the grand jury in Alexandria, Va., on Thursday. “He has an agreement of confidentiality with his sources and he intends to stand by that in the highest degree of journalistic traditions,” Kelley said.
Times spokeswoman Catherine Mathis said the paper “strongly supports Mr. Risen and deplores what seems to be a growing trend of government leak investigations focusing on journalists, particularly in the national security area.”