DETROIT MAN PLEADS GUILTY IN THEFT OF DAD'S BODY: DETROIT (AP) — A man accused of stealing his father's body from a Detroit cemetery with the hope of bringing him back to life has pleaded guilty in exchange for avoiding prison.
Vincent Bright pleaded guilty Monday to a charge of disinterring a body. He faces sentencing Sept. 24 in Wayne County Circuit Court.
"He seems to be doing well," defense lawyer Gerald Karafa told The Associated Press on Tuesday.
In exchange for the guilty plea, he said Bright will get probation with credit for time served. The judge ruled that Bright could be released on bail, Karafa said.
A presentencing review will help determine the details of Bright's probation, he said.
A conviction on the disinterring a body charge could have brought up to 10 years in prison.
Bright, then 48, stole the body of 93-year-old Clarence Bright from Gethsemane Cemetery on Jan. 14 and stored it in a home freezer. Police, acting on a tip from other family members, found the corpse in Vincent Bright's home on Detroit's east side.
Police said Vincent Bright is religious and took the body in hopes his father would be resurrected.
FORMER MONT. TEACHER GETS 30 DAYS FOR STUDENT RAPE: BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — A former Billings Senior High School teacher who pleaded guilty to raping a 14-year-old student who later killed herself has been sentenced to 30 days in jail by a judge who said the victim was "older than her chronological age" and "as much in control of the situation" as the teacher.
District Judge G. Todd Baugh sentenced Stacey Dean Rambold to 15 years in prison for sexual intercourse without consent, with all but 31 days suspended. He gave Rambold credit for one day already served, The Billings Gazette reported (http://bit.ly/1dmuHZo ).
The girl's mother repeatedly screamed, "You people suck!" and stormed out of the courtroom Monday.
Rambold, now 54, was charged in October 2008 with three counts of sexual intercourse without consent alleging that he had an ongoing sexual relationship with Cherice Morales, starting the previous year when she was 14.
Morales took her own life in February 2010 while the case was pending.
In July 2010, Rambold entered a three-year deferred prosecution agreement with prosecutors that said the charges would be dismissed if Rambold completed a sex offender treatment program and met other conditions, including having no contact with children. He also admitted to one rape charge.
The case was revived last December when prosecutors learned Rambold had been terminated from the sex offender treatment program.
The judge said he listened to statements given by Morales before her death and believed that while she was a troubled youth, she was "as much in control of the situation" as Rambold and was "older than her chronological age."
NH MAN SENTENCED, POSTED POT VIDS WITH FACE, NAME: AUBURN, N.H. (AP) — A New Hampshire man who inadvertently revealed his identity in anonymous online videos about his marijuana-growing operation has been sentenced to jail.
Police say Kyle Berry's how-to-grow-marijuana videos on YouTube were posted anonymously last fall, but his face was reflected off a shiny surface and a package showed his name.
Berry, of Auburn, pleaded guilty to manufacturing a controlled drug.
WMUR-TV reports (http://bit.ly/17jV8rD) Berry said he was growing the marijuana for his own use. Judge Marguerite Wageling says she had a hard time believing that, but agreed with Berry's lawyer that he was not a drug kingpin.
FACEBOOK: GOVERNMENTS DEMANDED DATA ON 38K USERS: WASHINGTON (AP) — Government agents in 74 countries demanded information on about 38,000 Facebook users in the first half of this year, with about half the orders coming from authorities in the United States, the company said Tuesday.
The social-networking giant is the latest technology company to release figures on how often governments seek information about its customers. Microsoft and Google have done the same.
As with the other companies, it's hard to discern much from Facebook's data, besides the fact that, as users around the globe flocked to the world's largest social network, police and intelligence agencies followed.
Facebook and Twitter have become organizing platforms for activists and, as such, have become targets for governments. During anti-government protests in Turkey in May and June, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan called social media "the worst menace to society."
At the time, Facebook denied it provided information about protest organizers to the Turkish government.
BAIL AT $3M FOR 2ND TEEN IN VETERAN BEATING CASE: SPOKANE, Wash. (AP) — Bail was set at $3 million Tuesday for a 16-year-old boy who is charged with killing a World War II veteran and contends the man was beaten to death because he shorted the teen and another boy on a sale of crack cocaine.
The allegation was sharply refuted by friends of Delbert Belton, the 88-year-old veteran known as "Shorty."
"Shorty never did no drugs," said Ted Denison, a friend who added that the defendants were "smearing his name."
The drug-dealing claim is in a letter police found after they arrested Kenan Adams-Kinard early Monday morning, Spokane County Deputy Prosecutor Larry Haskell said during Tuesday's court hearing.
Haskell said the letter contends that Adams-Kinard and Demetrius L. Glenn, 16, were buying crack cocaine from Belton when the attack occurred Aug. 21. That notion was scoffed at by family members and friends of Belton, who was known as Shorty because he was little more than 5 feet tall.
Haskell did not return several telephone calls seeking additional information on the drug-dealing claim.
Both teens are charged with first-degree murder and first-degree robbery. The charges carry a potential life sentence.
Police said Belton, who was wounded in the Battle of Okinawa, was beaten in his vehicle as he waited for a friend in the parking lot of an Eagles Lodge in north Spokane. Officers found Belton with serious head injuries, and his wallet had been taken. He died in the hospital Thursday.
The teens will be tried as adults, and Spokane County District Judge Debra Hayes on Tuesday ordered Adams-Kinard moved from a juvenile jail to the Spokane County Jail.
