Judge recuses himself in school shooting case:
This is a strange development. The judge who was overseeing the case of Kenneth Bartley, the Campbell County, Tennessee ten who shot and Campbell County High Assistant Principal Ken Bruce and wounded Principal Gary Seale and Assistant Principal Jim Pierce, has bowed out of the case. Criminal Court Judge Shayne Sexton did not give a reason why. Retired Judge Jon Kerry Blackwood will take over.
Another teen girl comes forward in MySpace assault case:
Another victim of scumbag rapist Scott Shefelbine has come forward…
The latest girl to come forward about her relationship with Scott D. Shefelbine claims the last time they were together, the 31-year-old Tolland man and former Ellington High School teacher’s aide physically forced her to have sexual relations with him, according to an affidavit supporting his arrest.
Shefelbine already is facing charges he sexually assaulted several other girls he met on MySpace.com.
According to the arrest warrant affidavit, the girl’s father called West Hartford police Oct. 10 to say he’d just seen a television news report about a sexual predator using MySpace to lure young girls, and recognized Shefelbine from his mug shot as the boy dating his 16-year-old daughter.
The father told police that Shefelbine had claimed to be 17 and had been to his house about 10 times, the affidavit says. He said he had asked Shefelbine to verify his age, but no identification ever was produced, according to the affidavit.
After the father’s report police interviewed the girl, who said she’d met Shefelbine in late August in an online chat room. Initially, she voluntarily performed a sex act on him whenever they were together, the affidavit says, but the last time they were together, she refused and Shefelbine forced her.
According to court documents, Shefelbine and the girl would communicate through instant messages on the computer, and he was able to obtain the girl’s cell phone number from her away message box.
He called her, they chatted for an hour, and a few days later, on Aug. 25, he picked her up and drove her to his Tolland home, the affidavit says.
While there they watched a movie and, according to the affidavit, Shefelbine gave the girl three bottles of raspberry-flavored vodka before suggesting “out of the blue” that she perform a sex act upon him.
At first she said no and went outside to smoke a cigarette, but when she came back she found Shefelbine on the couch waiting for her expectantly, the affidavit states.
The girl told police she complied then, and during each subsequent visit until their last meeting on Columbus Day.
Shefelbine called her from the car on his way to her house and asked her to have sexual relations with him, the affidavit states, but she repeatedly told him no. When he got to the house, however, he physically forced her, the document states.
The girl told police she didn’t want to comply, “but she did not know what else to do.”
Shefelbine first was arrested on Oct. 10 by the Vernon Police Department on charges that he sexually assaulted four teenage girls.
In those cases, police say Shefelbine used the Web site MySpace.com to meet teenage girls and their friends posing as a 17- to 19-year-old boy, using a hairpiece to hide his balding head.
MASSACRE PLOT: Issue in Kerns case going to full top court
The Massachusetts supreme court justice that was expected to hand down a decision regarding the interpretation of the law regarding communicating a threat in the trial of Tobin Kerns has refused to rule in the matter. Prosecutors are planning to argue the matter before the full Supreme Judicial Court. So again, God only knows when Tobin will know whether he’ll be exonerated or not.
This is a rather lengthy article, so bear with me, but it clarifies the final day of testimony in the trial of Tobin Kerns among other topics.
First, I previously posted that Tobin used what I call the “joke defense”. Someone who was at the trial told me that was taken out of context by the previous article. This quote is more accurate…
In his testimony, Kerns said he was just egging Nee on for entertainment purposes while sleep-deprived when he wrote down a list of items dictated to him by Nee for use in planning the Columbine-style attack, and that he never planned to do anything with it. He said he was just doodling when he drew a swastika, a DOS (Disciples of Satan) symbol and a magnifying class at the top of the page.
“I forgot all about that list until I was arrested,” he said.
While I’m not thrilled that Tobin doodled those things on the list, he has received help since then and prior to his arrest. Also, I think we all had that friend who talked a big game who we’d let rant and then roll our eyes as soon as he left the room. In Tobin’s case, that friend was Joe Nee.
And here is the clarification on the definition of communicating a threat Judge Coffin is looking for…
At issue is the definition of “communicating a threat.” Coffin said the question is whether the intended victim has to be threatened directly or whether a threat may be communicated by other means to the intended victim.
District Attorney Tim Cruz said Kerns was indicted on a charge of threatened use of deadly weapons at a school under a pre-Columbine state statute that defines what it means to communicate a threat, but the new, broader state statute on such a threat should apply in this case.
Massachusetts General Law refers to “whoever willfully communicates or causes to be communicated, either directly or indirectly, orally, in writing, by mail, by use of a telephone or telecommunication device including, but not limited to, electronic mail, Internet communications and facsimile communications, through an electronic communication device or by any other means” a threat.
Cruz filed the order because he is concerned that Coffin will use a more narrow definition to dismiss the charges or find Kerns not guilty, neither of which could be appealed.
The emergency order could be heard as soon as today (Oct. 25) by a single justice of the Supreme Judicial Court. The justice could decide that the full court needs to decide the issue, which would cause further delay. Coffin said he would wait to announce his decision on both charges until the threat charge has been “worked out.”
So we could be in for even more delays. Not to mention the fact that in all the articles I’ve read since this whole thing started, I have yet to read any instance of where Tobin uttered an actual threat. Granted, I only really see what is in the media, though.
And more testimony of Joe Nee’s chicanery…
McLaughlin also pressed Kerns on the contents of a Trapper Keeper that police found in the Kerns home. Kerns testified that he had loaned it to Nee, but McLaughlin questioned why Kerns had possession of it and why it was filled with his own writings, not Nee’s, along with a map of the high school with the names of intended shooters, targets and people to be spared that was submitted as evidence. Neither Kerns’ name nor his initials are on the map.
Kerns said he had forgotten all about the Trapper Keeper and hadn’t realized that Nee had left it behind in the room where Nee had stayed in the Kerns’ home in May 2004. Nee had to leave the home when Kerns was admitted by his father, Ben, into a mental health facility.
McElligott said Nee knew that the Trapper Keeper and its contents, including the supply list in Kerns’ handwriting, were in the Kerns home, and specifically told police to look for it. He said Nee had already ripped up the papers that implicated himself, as Farley had testified. He said Kerns, however, didn’t have a guilty conscience, and didn’t feel any need to look for it and then throw it away.
Hopefully, we won’t have to wait too long for an answer from the Supreme Judicial Court and then a verdict. Tobin has had this hanging over his head for two years now.