Ohio corrections officials say Ariel Castro, who held three women captive in his home for nearly a decade, has committed suicide at a state prison facility.

Spokeswoman JoEllen Smith says 53-year-old Castro was found hanging in his cell around 9:20 p.m. Tuesday at the Correctional Reception Center in Orient. Prison medical staff performed CPR before Castro was transported to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

The three women disappeared separately between 2002 and 2004, when they were 14, 16 and 20 years old. They escaped May 6, when one of the women broke part of a door and yelled to neighbors for help. Castro was arrested that evening.

Castro was sentenced August 1 to life in prison plus 1,000 years on his guilty plea to 937 counts including kidnapping and rape.

(AP) — The Army psychiatrist sentenced to death for the Fort Hood shooting rampage has been forcibly shaved, an Army spokesman said Tuesday.

Maj. Nidal Hasan began growing a beard in the years after the November 2009 shooting that left 13 dead and 30 wounded. The beard prompted delays to his court-martial because it violated Army grooming regulations. He was convicted of all charges last month at his court-martial at the Central Texas Army post and sentenced to death.

Now, Hasan is an inmate at the U.S. Detention Barracks at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, home to the military death row. Lt. Col. S. Justin Platt, an Army spokesman, said in a statement Tuesday that Hasan had been shaved. He did not specify when or provide details, however.

Officials at Fort Leavenworth previously had said Hasan would be subject to Army regulations.

Hasan dispensed with all criminal defense counsel and represented himself during his trial. A message left with John Galligan, Hasan’s first criminal defense attorney who still represents him in civil matters, was not returned.

Hasan said he grew the beard because his Muslim faith required it and was not meant as a show of disrespect. However, Col. Gregory Gross, the original judge presiding over Hasan’s court-martial, ordered Hasan to be clean-shaven or be forcibly shaved before his trial.

The dispute over that decision led to appeals that delayed the trial by more than three months before the appeals court ousted the judge. The appeals court ruled that Gross did not appear impartial while presiding over Hasan’s case and that the command, not a judge, is responsible for enforcing military grooming standards.

Col. Tara Osborn, assigned to replace Gross as the judge presiding over the case, allowed Hasan to keep the beard for the course of the trial last month. However, she warned that although she would not hold the breach of grooming regulations against the 42-year-old American-born Muslim, the military jurors might.

 

 

(AP) — A new report from the National Agricultural Statistics Service shows the Kansas corn crop maturing far more slowly than normal.

The agency said in its weekly update Tuesday that just 4 percent of the crop has matured, well behind last year’s figure of 60 percent and an early-September average of 33 percent.

Corn condition is rated as 30 percent poor to very poor, while 31 percent is considered in fair shape. About 32 percent of the crop is in good condition, and 7 percent is rated excellent.

About 30 percent of the sorghum is turning color now. About 83 percent of the soybeans are setting pods.

 

Two women were injured in a Tuesday afternoon crash in Graham County.

According to the Kansas Highway Patrol Sixty year old Nalini Padala Reddy of Hill City was driving a 2010 Honda Odyssey southbound on Pomeroy, one block north of US 24 when she hit a westbound Mercury Sable driven by Beverly Jones Penley of Dothan, Alabama.

The Sable failed to yield at the stop sign and pulled out in front of the Odyssey. Reddy and Penley were both transported to the hospital in Hill City. Both were wearing seat belts.

AP) — The Kansas House has approved changes to a state law that automatically imposes a 50-year sentence on some convicted murderers, a move sparked by a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision striking down a similar law in Virginia.

Tuesday’s 122-0 vote came on the first day of a special session called by Gov. Sam Brownback to fix the state’s so-called Hard 50 law. The legislation — which puts the sentencing process in the hands of juries — now goes to the Senate, which is expected to approve it Wednesday

Kansas adopted the Hard 50 sentence in 1990, after the Legislature rejected the death penalty but sought to ensure long prison terms for certain murders.

 

AP) — A former Kansas Court of Appeals research attorney faces a disciplinary hearing for derogatory comments she tweeted during the same kind of hearing last year for former state Attorney General Phill Kline.

The hearing for Sarah Peterson Herr was scheduled Tuesday for Dec. 20.

Herr posted the comments last Nov. 15 while Kline was appearing before the Kansas Supreme Court in a disciplinary hearing. The court was considering whether to suspend Kline’s law license for his conduct during investigations of abortion providers while he was attorney general and Johnson County district attorney.

Herr apologized and was fired a few days later. She had worked since 2010 for a Court of Appeals judge and was promoted the following year to research attorney.

 

Two men have been sentenced in separate federal cases for Social Security fraud, U.S. Attorney Barry Grissom said Monday.

The men, L. T. Baker, 54, Wichita, Kan., and Paul David Lieder, 40, Hillsboro, Kan., each had pleaded guilty to making false statements to the Social Security Administration in order to receive disability payments to which they were not entitled.  Both were sentenced Monday in U.S. District Court in Wichita.

Baker was sentenced to one year in federal prison and was ordered to repay the Social Security Administration $66,354 — benefits he received while claiming to be disabled.  Baker had been gainfully employed since 2000 but used a second Social Security account number that had been issued to him in a slightly different name so that the Social Security Administration would not know he was employed.  Baker’s fraud came to light when the Kansas Department of Revenue discovered there were two Social Security numbers associated with Baker and reported that information to the Social Security Administration Office of Inspector General, which investigated both cases.

Lieder was sentenced to three years of probation and ordered to repay $24,000 to the Social Security Administration. He admitted using his father’s Social Security number so that he could work without the Social Security Administration finding out.  When Lieder’s father applied for Social Security benefits, the Social Security Administration detected that Lieder had been using his father’s number to defraud the disability program.

Grissom praised the Social Security Administration’s Office of Inspector General for its investigation of the cases and Assistant U.S. Attorney Brent Anderson for his prosecution.

4p.m. Tuesday  AP) — A Kansas Senate committee has approved Gov. Sam Brownback’s nomination of his chief counsel for an open seat on the state Court of Appeals.

The Judiciary Committee’s voice vote sends the nomination of Caleb Stegall to the full Senate. The chamber is expected to debate and vote on the appointment Wednesday.

Republicans dominate the committee and the full Senate, so the GOP governor’s nomination of Stegall wasn’t likely to meet much opposition.

But he faced questions about comments in 2005 in an online magazine he edited that encouraged “forcible resistance” to court orders in order to save the life of a brain-damaged Florida woman.

Stegall said during a Judiciary Committee hearing that the comments in The New Pantagruel about the Terri Schiavo case were an endorsement of civil disobedience.

 

(AP) — Gov. Sam Brownback’s chief counsel faces questions from state senators ahead of a committee vote on his nomination to the Kansas Court of Appeals.

Tuesday’s Judiciary Committee hearing on Caleb Stegall’s appointment to the state’s second highest court was the Senate’s main business on the opening day of a special legislative session.

The committee planned to vote Tuesday evening.

Lawmakers are convening to rewrite a law allowing murderers to be sentenced to at least 50 years in prison. But the Senate is legally obligated to consider pending appointments.

The 41-year-old Stegall was an attorney in private practice and Jefferson County’s elected prosecutor before joining Brownback’s staff in 2011. He’s submitted more than 300 pages of documents to the committee.

The full Senate hopes to vote on his appointment Wednesday.