High court blocks judge from holding hearing
BILLINGS, Mont. – Montana’s Supreme Court on Friday blocked a judge from resentencing a former teacher who got just 30 days in prison for raping a 14-year-old student, a sentence that was widely criticized after the judge said the victim was “older than her chronological age.”
Justices said Judge G. Todd Baugh lacks authority to reconsider the sentence he gave former Billings teacher Stacey Rambold, 54.
An appeal of the case already was pending, but Baugh had been seeking to possibly undo the sentence that was panned after his remarks. Baugh also commented that victim Cherice Moralez was “as much in control of the situation as was the defendant.”
The girl committed suicide in 2010 while Rambold’s trial was pending.
The Attorney General’s Office filed an emergency petition to stop the Friday afternoon hearing.
Attorneys for the state had warned that holding it as planned could throw the case into disarray and “cause gross injustice to an orderly appeal.”
Kidnapper called mom of victim, police say
COLUMBUS, Ohio – Cleveland kidnapper Ariel Castro said he called the mother of one of his captives and told the woman her daughter was alive and doing well and that she had become his wife, according to interrogation videotapes.
Castro also told investigators that authorities missed opportunities to catch him while he held the three women captive for about a decade in a run-down house where they were repeatedly beaten and raped.
Castro says in the video – obtained by NBC and first reported Friday on the “Today” show – that he used Amanda Berry’s cellphone to call her mother.
“I think I said something ... that I have her daughter and that she’s OK, and that she’s my wife now – something like that, you know, probably not the exact words,” he told investigators.
When asked for the mother’s response, Castro said: “I hung up, so we didn’t have a conversation.”
Associated Press
