The girlfriend of confessed killer Joey Moses told a jury Thursday she secretly wore a "wire" and agreed to have cell phone conversations recorded as she helped federal agents build a case against a second man implicated in a 2006 home-invasion murder on the Spokane Indian Reservation. Virginia Green, her voice breaking at times, also told a U.S. District Court jury that she had telephone contact with Moses after he fled the area days after he fatally shot Gary Flett Jr. on June 1, 2006.
Confessed murderer Joey Jake Moses told a jury Wednesday that he vomited immediately after firing the first few bullets that took the life of Gary Flett Jr. in a 2006 home invasion on the Spokane Indian Reservation. Moses, 24, agreed to testify as a prosecution witness against his friend, Norman "Griz" Ford Jr., who is on trial in U.S. District Court in Spokane on charges of first-degree murder, first-degree burglary and use of a firearm during a crime of violence.
A 31-year-old man is on trial in U.S. District Court, charged with first-degree murder, first-degree burglary and using a firearm in a crime of violence on the Spokane Indian Reservation. The prosecution's case against Norman Ford Jr. largely will be built around key witness Joey Jake Moses, who already has pleaded guilty to murder, seeking to avoid spending the rest of his life in prison by testifying to get a lighter sentence.
A criminal case from Spokane will be argued today before the U.S. Supreme Court. The justices will decide whether Gino Gonzaga Rodriquez, convicted four years ago of being a felon in possession of a firearm, should have been sentenced to a minimum of 15 years in prison as an "armed career criminal."
Spokane Raceway Park will be sold at public auction within 90 days, capping a five-year legal fight by more than 500 limited partners who say they've seen no return on investments they made to build the facility in the early 1970s. The auction was approved Friday by Superior Court Judge Robert Austin, who granted an order submitted by court-appointed receiver Barry W. Davidson to hire J.P. King Auction Co. Inc., of Gadsden, Ala. The firm will market the 600-acre site nationwide and sell it at public auction by April 13.
A Colville man who once threatened to kill a Pend Oreille County judge and a deputy prosecutor has been sentenced to almost 22 years in federal prison after being designated an "armed career criminal." Matthew R. Descamps, 50, was sentenced Friday to 262 months in prison by U.S. District Court Judge Fred Van Sickle. Descamps filed an appeal of the sentence on Monday.
A cocaine distributor who vanished a dozen years ago before turning up last year in New Zealand was sentenced Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Spokane to almost 13 years in a federal prison. Robin Muller is the 37th and last defendant from "Operation Doughboy," a major drug investigation in the early 1990s that took down Spokane-area attorneys, businessmen, tavern owners, a former deputy prosecutor and even a drug counselor.
Smuggling of humans across the U.S. border near Danville, Wash., northwest of Spokane, is spiking, federal authorities said Monday. In the past two months, Border Patrol agents apprehended 11 illegal immigrants, more than the total for the previous fiscal year, according to Lonnie Moore, special operations supervisor with the Spokane sector of the U.S. Border Patrol.
A Spokane rapper who calls himself "Dead Poet" was found guilty Friday afternoon in U.S. District Court of armed bank robbery and attempted witness tampering. John "Bobby" Vigil, 26, will remain in jail until sentencing in a few weeks by Judge Lonny Suko.
Spokane's "dangerous dog" ordinance is unconstitutional because it denies pet owners the right of due process, a Superior Court judge ruled Friday in a case that may have far-reaching effects. As a matter of law, the administrative procedures used in the city of Spokane regarding "dangerous dog" determinations and appeals from those rulings violate citizens' due process rights, Judge Robert Austin said in his ruling.
An accused bank robber and part-time rapper from Spokane who calls himself "Dead Poet" told a U.S. District Court jury Thursday he wasn't one of three men who robbed a North Side credit union of almost $10,000 a year ago. John "Bobby" Vigil testified he accompanied his longtime friends Brad, Greg and Dustin Rockstrom on a trip to Montana after they held up the Safeway Federal Credit Union on Nov. 28, 2006, while he was home taking a shower.
A metal fabricator hired to make large exhaust fans at a Spokane company spent some of his time making illegal firearm silencers which he claimed to be selling on the Spokane Indian Reservation. Michael G. Teasley, a former employee of Unifire Manufacturing, also told fellow employees he would "have to shoot the cop" if a police officer questioned him about having a .50-caliber handgun that he couldn't legally possess because of a prior first-degree assault conviction, court records say.
Spokane County Prosecutor Steve Tucker said Tuesday there is no basis to file criminal charges against Spokane police Officer Jason Uberuaga, who was the focus of a month-long rape investigation, a county spokeswoman said Tuesday in a prepared statement. Based on the results of a Washington State Patrol investigation and review by two deputy prosecutors, "Tucker has determined that the evidence does not meet charging standards for sexual assault," according to a five-sentence news release.
As part of a nationwide investigation, FBI agents raided three Coeur d'Alene business locations on Thursday, seizing records and dies used to make the so-called silver "Liberty Dollar" sold throughout the United States by anti-government patriot groups. The Coeur d'Alene raids coincided with similar raids by FBI and U.S. Secret Service agents, on Thursday at the Evansville, Ind., headquarters of organization called NORFED – the National Organization for the Repeal of the Federal Reserve Act & Internal Revenue Code.
Federal legislation inching its way through Congress would outlaw "diploma mills" like those at the center of a criminal case being prosecuted in Spokane. Eight members of Congress are co-sponsoring the proposed "Diploma Integrity Protection Act," introduced earlier this year by Rep. Betty McCollum, D-Minn.
Clarkston, a city of about 7,200 in the southeastern corner of Washington, is 1,841 miles from New Orleans, devastated by Hurricane Katrina in August 2005. But Justice Department officials said Thursday that distance didn't prevent a Clarkston couple from allegedly applying for and getting $29,921 in "hurricane disaster assistance" payments from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Dale R. Perry, who admitted accepting a bribe while he was mayor of Airway Heights, was scolded Thursday by a federal judge before being sentenced to six months of work release, followed by three months of home detention and three years of probation. During that time, the 54-year-old former mayor, who has a self-described gambling addiction, cannot set foot in a casino and must undergo mental-health counseling and make regular personal financial disclosures to his probation officer.
Superior Court Judge Jerome Leveque expressed frustration Monday that attorneys on both sides of an ambulance company overbilling lawsuit haven't reached agreement on the production of documents and patients' names before a trial can occur. The jury trial in the 2-year-old class action lawsuit against American Medical Response had been scheduled to begin this week, but it now likely won't occur until sometime next fall.
A 29-year-old woman who drove a getaway truck after a Newport, Wash., bank robbery earlier this year was convicted of conspiracy Monday in U.S. District Court in Spokane. The 12-member jury found Jamie Vaudeen Whittenburg not guilty of two other charges – aiding and abetting armed bank robbery and using or brandishing a firearm in connection with a violent crime.
An Omak, Wash., maintenance man who videotaped himself raping four young girls and putting the encounters on the Internet was sentenced Monday in Spokane to spend the next 20 years in federal prison. "I don't mean to be overly dramatic, but this really is a terrible case," Senior U.S. District Court Judge Frem Nielsen said before sentencing Scott Dean Brown to prison.
SANDPOINT – Pushed to the point of near-extinction a decade ago, wolves are now flourishing in Idaho, with packs gradually making their way north of Interstate 90 in the state's Panhandle to the Canadian border and spreading into Washington, a wolf expert told conservationists Saturday. There are now an estimated 788 wolves living in Idaho, up from 650 just a year ago, wildlife biologist Dave Spicer, of the Idaho Department of Fish and Game, told 90 people attending a conference sponsored by the Idaho Conservation League and the Friends of Scotchman Peaks Wilderness.
Child-porn suspect Kenneth John Freeman agreed to remain in jail without bond during a brief arraignment Friday in U.S. District Court in Spokane, one day after the fugitive was returned from China. The 44-year-old former reserve deputy is charged in a federal indictment, returned in the Eastern District of Washington, with production and transportation of child pornography.
A man described as "one of the most infamous bad guys" by the TV show "America's Most Wanted" is scheduled to be arraigned today in Spokane on federal charges of production and transportation of child pornography. Kenneth John Freeman, who once held the title "Mr. Eastern Washington Bodybuilder," was arrested in May in Hong Kong after a worldwide manhunt tracked him to China, where he reportedly had been working as a computer consultant for a U.S.-based company.
The targets of a diploma mill investigation reported a $200,000 theft of business records to police in 2005, two months after the 11 boxes of documents were seized in a Post Falls office building by a federal task force dubbed "Operation Gold Seal." Bryan Tafoya, a Spokane police detective assigned to the task force, joined Post Falls police Detective Dave Beck to investigate the reported theft on May 31, 2005, U.S. District Court Judge Lonnie Suko was told Wednesday.
