In brief: Mikulski won’t seek sixth Senate term

BALTIMORE – Sen. Barbara Mikulski, a former social worker from Baltimore who became a leading liberal voice in Washington and the longest-serving woman in Congress, announced in an emotional news conference on Monday that she would not seek a sixth term in 2016.

Mikulski, who rose to become the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, told reporters gathered in Fells Point that she wanted to spend the next two years helping to groom the next generation of Democratic leaders in the state.

“Do I spend my time raising money or raising hell to meet your day-to-day needs? Do I spend time focusing on my election or the next generation?” Mikulski said. “The more I thought about it, the more the answer became really clear.”

The announcement came as a shock to many Democrats – particularly those in Maryland – who thought Mikulski would remain in the post for another term in hopes that Democrats would reclaim the Senate in a presidential election year.

Judge strikes down gay marriage ban

OMAHA, Neb. – Nebraska’s same-sex marriage ban was thrown into question Monday alongside those in three nearby states that are set for a hearing before a federal appeals court.

U.S. District Court Judge Joseph Bataillon struck down Nebraska’s constitutional amendment, triggering an appeal less than an hour later by the state attorney general’s office.

The appeal could place the case before the conservative 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which will hear similar cases out of Arkansas, Missouri and South Dakota. The court has tentatively scheduled arguments on those cases for the week of May 11.

Bataillon did not issue a stay on his ruling while the case is appealed, but ordered it not to go into effect until March 9.

Nebraska Attorney General Doug Peterson, a Republican, said his office would ask the federal appeals court to issue an emergency order barring county officials from issuing same-sex marriage licenses while the case is pending. The American Civil Liberties Union of Nebraska had sued the state in November on behalf of seven same-sex couples challenging the ban.

Sex offender from Canada charged

SEATTLE – A high-risk sex offender who fled Canada for Seattle was being held on $1 million bail after authorities charged him with raping a 69-year-old woman.

According to documents filed in King County Superior Court, 49-year-old Michael Stanley had previously done yardwork at the victim’s home.

He showed up on Friday night seeking additional work. She told him she didn’t have any, but investigators said he sneaked back into the home and attacked her.

He was charged with first-degree burglary and second-degree rape, and faces at least 15 to 20 years if convicted, said Dan Donohoe, a spokesman for the King County Prosecutor’s Office.

Stanley, formerly of Edmonton, made news reports in 2013 when he cut off an electronic-monitoring bracelet and crossed the U.S. border. He’s a U.S. citizen, and American authorities said they had no reason to arrest him. Canada decided not to ask for his extradition, and he registered in Seattle as a sex offender.

Mother guilty of poisoning death

WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. – A woman who blogged for years about her son’s constant health woes was convicted Monday of poisoning him to death by force-feeding heavy concentrations of sodium through his stomach tube.

A jury in the New York suburbs found Lacey Spears, of Scottsville, Kentucky, guilty of second-degree murder in the death last year of 5-year-old Garnett-Paul Spears.

The defense portrayed Spears as a caring mother and her son as sickly, but the prosecution argued that Spears reveled in the attention Garnett’s illness brought her. Video showed Spears twice taking the boy into a hospital bathroom with a connector tube and the boy suffering afterward.

“The motive is bizarre, the motive is scary, but it exists,” Assistant District Attorney Patricia Murphy said in closing arguments Thursday. “She apparently craved the attention.”

She suggested that Spears, 27, eventually killed the boy because she feared he would start telling people she was making him ill. Her actions were “nothing short of torture,” she said.

Several doctors testified that there was no medical explanation for the spike in Garnett’s sodium levels that led to his death.