Thomas Clouse

A jury awarded an Airway Heights man $300,000 in Federal Court after he sued a Spokane County Sheriff’s Office deputy over a traffic stop that ended with the man being tackled to the pavement. The jury found that Deputy Dale Moyer was negligent in calling in the wrong license plate number when he stopped a car in which John W. Jenkins was riding. The number Moyer called in came back as a stolen vehicle.

Dressed in long shorts, sneakers with no socks and a collarless shirt, Cole M. Kendall stood before a judge Wednesday and entered an Alford plea for stabbing two people last year at an underage drinking party. Still six months shy of legal drinking age, Kendall is now one conviction away from facing life in prison under Washington’s three-strikes law.

Bearded woman asks for new trial

Bearded woman guilty of assaulting officer's genitals

A man pleaded guilty today to slashing the neck of his ex-girlfriend’s new boyfriend earlier this year. The victim survived, but required 13 stitches to close the wound.

A jury today took 20 minutes to convict a woman, who wears a beard and lives as a man, of assaulting a Spokane Police officer in 2009.

State prison officials are investigating the death of an inmate over the weekend, but a criminal investigation has not been requested.

A day after Spokane County Sheriff Ozzie Knezovich declared war on property crimes, the Spokane Police Department sent out a news release highlighting a previously announced initiative designed to combat property crimes by focusing resources on problem areas.

A Spokane County woman is out about $2,000 after she tried to help what turned out to be yet another scam seeking willing participants to cash money orders – which turn out to be fraudulent – to help needy people overseas.

A man who served three years in prison for stalking and witness tampering could be headed back there after he was arrested just after midnight following a police pursuit where he reportedly backed his vehicle into the patrol car of a Spokane Valley Police officer.

Newly released documents show Spokane police officers involved in the deadly altercation with Otto Zehm were given three days to think about the incident before writing reports detailing the 2006 encounter, and when they were asked to file reports, did so in a group with the aid of an attorney hired by their union. The transcripts of grand jury testimony that remained secret for three years provide previously undisclosed details of how the Spokane Police Department managed the criminal investigation into the deadly confrontation with the 36-year-old, mentally ill janitor – an investigation that one high-ranking U.S. Justice Department official has said amounted to a cover-up.

A Twisp man pleaded guilty Wednesday to conspiring to kill a protected wolf and send its pelt to a friend in Canada in return for the friend’s help in illegally killing a moose. Wearing a leather vest and cowboy hat, William D. White, 62, pleaded guilty in federal court to the charges of conspiracy to take an endangered species, conspiracy to transport endangered species and unlawful importation of wildlife. The importation charge stemmed from the moose, which White brought back to the Methow Valley from Canada, along with a whitetail deer.

A Twisp man pleaded guilty Wednesday to conspiring to kill a protected wolf and send its pelt to a friend in Canada in return for the friend’s help in illegally killing a moose.

A Gonzaga law student learned firsthand Wednesday how difficult it can be to stand before a panel of justices who couldn’t care less about the brief she wrote and only wanted her to explain the creases within the law. Cherlyn Walden, a third-year student at Gonzaga University School of Law, provided oral argument before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces, which is the highest court to hear legal appeals originating from cases involving military members. Only the U.S. Supreme Court is authorized to reconsider its rulings.

State Rep. Phil Hart’s anti-tax battle hit the big time Monday, at least in Idaho. The visiting Idaho Supreme Court considered oral arguments in Hart’s continuing fight against income taxes, and the justices appeared to have little patience for the Athol lawmaker’s claims that the state constitution shields him from tax collectors.

The U.S. attorney’s office on Friday said allegations of prosecutorial misconduct by a forensic videographer – charges that have indefinitely stalled the sentencing of former Spokane police Officer Karl F. Thompson Jr. – are meritless and claimed the man lied about how he first became involved in the case. Assistant U.S. Attorney Aine Ahmed filed scores of pages Friday detailing the pretrial and post-trial dealings with forensic video expert Grant Fredericks, who approached U.S. District Judge Fred Van Sickle with concerns only after a jury convicted Thompson in November of using excessive force and lying to investigators to cover up the fatal 2006 confrontation with Otto Zehm.

The forensic videographer, whose allegations of prosecutorial misconduct have indefinitely stalled the sentencing of former Spokane Police Officer Karl F. Thompson, Jr., is depicted in new court documents as an attention-seeking police apologist who lied to federal investigators and whose misguided concerns of prosecutorial misconduct are meritless.

A Stevens County jury today convicted a man of first-degree murder after he was charged with pumping 10 bullets into his wife in 2009 after she indicated that she was leaving him.