In brief: Fatal police shooting case headed to grand jury

NORTH CHARLESTON, S.C. – Prosecutors in South Carolina plan to go to a local grand jury with the case of the former North Charleston police officer who shot and killed a black man during a traffic stop.

The soonest the case could be presented to a grand jury is May 4, according to the prosecutor’s office. The former officer, Michael T. Slager, is being held on a charge of murder in connection with the shooting death of Walter L. Scott on Saturday. Slager is not expected to appear in court again for weeks.

In most jurisdictions across the nation, the decision to go to a grand jury is a required step given the seriousness of the charge. Prosecutors, however, have had a mixed record in using a grand jury in cases involving police violence.

Pitchman pleads guilty to kicking owl

SALT LAKE CITY – A former TV pitchman in Utah accused of kicking a barn owl in flight while riding a motorized paraglider pleaded guilty to the charges Friday, one day after a proposed plea deal fell through when he refused to admit to the crime.

In an unplanned hearing Friday afternoon, Dell “Super Dell” Schanze, 45, surprisingly pleaded guilty to the misdemeanor charge of knowingly using an aircraft to harass wildlife and pursuing a migratory bird, U.S. Attorney’s Office spokeswoman Melodie Rydalch said.

U.S. District Judge Dee Benson sentenced Schanze to one year of court probation. He also ordered him to give up his parasail and forbade Schanze from landing his paraglider in a federally designated Wilderness Area.

On Thursday in a hearing set for him to accept a plea deal, he balked at accepting the facts of the case, saying it made him seem like an evil, horrible guy.

The charges, filed in October, came after a federal investigation into a video that surfaced online last year and appeared to show a paraglider kicking a soaring owl and boasting about it. The incident happened February or March 2011, prosecutors said.