Court: Inmate calls to family not private
Jail inmates’ phone calls to loved ones aren’t private and the state can listen in and use the recordings against them, the state Supreme Court ruled Thursday.
In its 7-2 ruling, the high court said that Desmond Modica had no reasonable expectation of privacy while making phone calls to his grandmother from King County jail.
Modica was arrested in 2005 for striking his wife in the face, and he called his grandmother almost every day and enlisted her help in getting his wife to not appear in court. Signs near the telephones and automated messages on the phone warned that the calls would be recorded.
Those calls were used against Modica in King County Superior Court, and he was convicted of assault, resisting arrest and tampering with a witness. The Court of Appeals affirmed the conviction.
Sunnyside, Wash.
Task force seizes 30,000 pot plants
Two people have been arrested and 30,000 marijuana plants have been seized in a vineyard south of Sunnyside.
About a dozen members of Law Enforcement Against Drugs, a lower Yakima Valley task force, took in the last of the crop Wednesday afternoon, a day after the arrests.
The value is estimated at $20 million. It’s the biggest marijuana raid in Washington this year and accounts for nearly half of the 62,000 pot plants that have been seized statewide.
State Patrol Sgt. Richard A. Beghtol, the task force supervisor, said marijuana growers are again turning to irrigated farmland in addition to remote forest areas. Beghtol said that marks a return to a technique that was popular in the state a decade ago.
In May, 10,000 young marijuana plants were pulled from a cornfield east of Zillah.
Lewiston
Tribal members say group yelled slurs
A report that four people in a pickup roared through a Nez Perce tribal camp shouting racial slurs and obscenities is under investigation, Lewis County sheriff’s deputies say.
Tribal members at the remote Talmaks Presbyterian Camp said they were at an annual camp meeting when the red truck going about 40 mph made two circuits around a loop road early Sunday morning.
The speed limit is 15 mph. Witnesses described the four occupants of the truck as “cowboys.”
“According to our elders, this is the first modern-day incident like this,” said Dave Penney, a member of the camp police force. “I believe it was a hate crime.”
He said a report is also being submitted to tribal police.
“I want to make sure this incident is properly investigated,” Penney said. “I don’t want anybody to say it didn’t happen. It was a dangerous situation.”
He said children and others are often on the loop road, riding bikes or walking, at the camp on the Nez Perce reservation in north-central Idaho.
Aaron Penney, another camp police officer, said he pursued the truck for about 30 minutes but was unable to catch it because of poor visibility from road dust kicked up by the pickup.
He said two directional signs leading to the camp had been removed.
Jeff Guillory, a diversity education director at Washington State University, said he heard some of the insults.
“They came roaring through and surprised everybody,” Guillory said, “and it shocked us when they were yelling racial slurs. It was pretty ugly.”
Idaho Falls
Rangeland fire at lab contained
Fire officials say they have contained a rangeland fire at the Idaho National Laboratory in eastern Idaho.
The fire ignited on a desert section Wednesday between the Materials & Fuels Complex, a test center for nuclear power systems, and the central facilities area, the main service and support center for INL’s transportation, maintenance, construction and monitoring activities.
The fire burned 1,400 acres and forced the evacuation of 400 employees.
Vancouver, B.C.
Two of five feet from same body
Two of the five feet that have washed up on the shores of British Columbia over the past year belonged to the same person, but no identities have been determined in any of the cases, police said Thursday.
A Royal Canadian Mounted Police spokeswoman said DNA testing determined that a left foot found in June came from the same male as a right foot found in February. She said police are reviewing missing persons files and have eliminated 130 so far.
Authorities have said they have no reason to believe the cases were related or involved wrongdoing, although they aren’t ruling out any possibilities.
“There is no evidence that these feet have been severed. There were no tool marks and no visible signs of trauma,” Constable Annie Linteau said at a news conference.
Curtis Ebbesmeyer, an oceanographer, said that when a body decomposes in water, it is not unusual for its parts to separate after prolonged submersion.
The first three feet washed ashore about 40 miles southwest of Vancouver on islands in the Strait of Georgia. The first was discovered last summer by beachcombers. Days later, a foot was found inside a man’s Reebok sneaker. The remains of a third foot were found Feb 8.
The fourth foot was found May 22 on Kirkland Island in the Fraser River, about 15 miles south of Vancouver. The fifth – and the only left foot found – washed up about a mile away and was discovered June 16.
A sixth find last month turned out to be a hoax, an animal paw stuffed inside a shoe.
Dean Hilderbrand, a forensic scientist working on the case, said officials have not yet contacted Swedish police about a similar foot found near Stockholm two days ago.
Yakima
Rape suspect held without bail
A federal judge has ordered detention without bail for a man accused of driving cross country to have sex with a Boise teenager.
U.S. District Judge Lonny R. Suko on Thursday determined that 27-year-old Morgan Jones, of Birmingham, Ala., poses a flight risk. The judge noted that Jones has no ties to Washington state and reportedly talked of taking the 14-year-old girl to Mexico.
Suko also concluded Jones could pose a danger to himself and the girl.
Jones pleaded innocent last week to a federal charge of transportation with intent to engage in criminal activity.
The two reportedly met while playing an online game last summer, and Jones is accused of picking up the teen from her home on May 28. They were found five days later at a campground about 70 miles northeast of Pasco.
From wire reports