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Chinese woman pleads guilty in college test-taking scheme
U.S. Court News |
2015/11/01 09:39
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A Chinese woman pleaded guilty Thursday to conspiring to have two other women take college admissions examinations in her place to help her get accepted to Virginia Tech.
Yue Zou acknowledged having her boyfriend contact a China-based test-taking service.
After that happened, Zou, of Blacksburg, Virginia, supplied her passport information through an online network known as QQ Chat, which enabled people in China to create in her name phony passports that were shipped to her in the United States.
On the passports were the photos of two other Chinese women, who took tests in the Pittsburgh area while pretending to be her.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Jimmy Kitchen told the judge that Zou forwarded results from the Test of English as a Foreign Language, or TOEFL, to Virginia Tech in November 2013 and results of a Scholastic Aptitude Test, or SAT, taken by another Chinese impostor in March 2014.
Zou, from Hegang, a city in the Chinese province of Heilongjiang, paid an unspecified sum for the TOEFL and $2,000 for the SAT, Kitchen told a judge in U.S. District Court in Pittsburgh.
Zou, 21, faces up to five years in prison when she's sentenced in February. She could also be deported, though that will be handled by federal immigration officials in a separate proceeding.
Federal authorities haven't explained how they learned of the scheme.
Zou's attorney, Lyle Dresbold, told the judge that Zou will remain confined to her Blacksburg apartment with an electronic monitoring bracelet until she's sentenced. He told the judge she's still enrolled at Virginia Tech.
University spokesman Mark Owczarski said he could not comment on her status. But he said students found to have submitted work that is not their own to gain admission would face a range of possible sanctions, including expulsion, under the university's honor code.
Zou's TOEFL test was taken by Yunlin Sun, 24, of Berlin, Somerset County. She pleaded guilty in August and faces sentencing in December. Prosecutors say Ning Wei, from Taiyuan, in the Chinese province of Shanxi, took Zou's SAT. She hasn't been arrested, and prosecutors say they believe she returned to China.
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US court upholds Oklahoma death row inmate's sentence
U.S. Court News |
2015/09/16 10:34
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A divided federal appeals court panel upheld the murder convictions and death sentence Tuesday of a 54-year-old man who went on a multistate crime spree in 2003.
The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals voted 2-1 to affirm the death sentence of Scott Eizember, who received the punishment after his first-degree murder conviction in the Oct. 18, 2003, bludgeoning death of A.J. Cantrell, 76. Eizember was also found guilty of second-degree murder in the shooting of Patsy Cantrell, 70, for which he received 150 years in prison, as well as a variety of other charges.
On appeal, Eizember alleged that the trial court allowed two jurors who he alleged were "impermissibly biased in favor of the death penalty," thus "depriving him of trial by an impartial jury and due process in violation of the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments."
The court agreed with the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals and a federal district judge in rejecting Eizember's claims.
Eizember was the focus of an intense manhunt following the shootings in rural Depew but eluded authorities for 37 days. He was discovered that November by a 75-year-old volunteer at a church, but then stole the volunteer's vehicle, which he abandoned near Waldron, Arkansas.
He was captured later that day outside Lufkin, Texas, after kidnapping an Arkansas physician and his wife, holding them at gunpoint for six hours and forcing them to drive. The physician eventually shot Eizember four times. Eizember was convicted of kidnapping, carjacking and using a firearm in a crime of violence in Arkansas and was sentenced 25 years in federal prison.
In a 30-page dissenting opinion, Chief Judge Mary Beck Briscoe wrote that she would affirm Eizember's convictions "but reverse his death sentence and remand for resentencing before a fair and impartial jury."
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Court rules against St. Louis police in ticket scandal
U.S. Court News |
2015/08/20 10:49
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The St. Louis police department will have to turn over records from its probe into a scandal over 2006 World Series tickets now that the Missouri Supreme Court has thrown out a final appeal that sought to block the documents' release.
The state high court's ruling on Tuesday upholds decisions by a St. Louis judge and a state appellate court who ordered the release of records from the department's investigation of officers who gave tickets that had been confiscated from scalpers to friends and family.
"This ends it," Neil Bruntrager, a lawyer for the officers, told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch for a story Thursday. "We certainly are disappointed. There are privacy issues at play."
Eight officers and six supervisors were disciplined for giving away the tickets to the three games played in St. Louis during the series, in which the Cardinals defeated the Detroit Tigers in five games. But the police department refused to turn over the records of its internal probe, leading the American Civil Liberties Union of Missouri to sue, saying the records should be released under Missouri's Sunshine Law.
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Federal report finds bias in St. Louis County family court
U.S. Court News |
2015/08/01 13:33
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The U.S. Department of Justice released a report critical of the St. Louis County Family Court on Friday, finding that black youths are treated more harshly than whites, and juveniles are often deprived of constitutional rights. Though unrelated to the department's investigation in Ferguson, the new report again raises concern about racial discrimination and profiling in the St. Louis region.
The investigation from the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division was initiated in 2013 amid complaints that black youths were treated unfairly in the family court, which handles about 6,000 youth cases each year. Treatment of African-Americans in the region drew increased scrutiny last year after the fatal shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown, who was black, by a white police officer in Ferguson. The 60-page report arrived just over a week before the anniversary of Brown's death, Aug. 9.
"In short, black children are subjected to harsher treatment because of their race," Assistant Attorney General Vanita Gupta wrote in a letter to Gov. Jay Nixon, St. Louis County Executive Steve Stenger and Family Court Administrative Judge Thea Sherry. She called the findings "serious and compelling."
Nixon called the report "deeply concerning." Though in St. Louis County, the court is supervised by the Missouri Supreme Court. "All Missourians have a right to a fair and equitable justice system, and our young people are no exception," Nixon said in a statement.
Stenger said he will urge the court "to work with the state of Missouri to fix the glaring problems identified by the Department of Justice."
The report said the Justice Department will seek to resolve complaints through negotiations, though litigation remains possible. Gupta said at a news conference that an initial meeting with family court officials was "cordial and cooperative."
The department is taking a similar tack as after a report released in March alleging racial bias and profiling by police and the municipal court in Ferguson. That report was begun following Brown's death, and negotiations between the DOJ and Ferguson officials are still going on.
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