Kansas City, Mo. – A former California prison inmate, incarcerated for state sex offenses, was sentenced in federal court Thursday for using a smuggled cell phone to distribute child pornography over the Internet.

Eric Lee Bederson, 37, formerly an inmate at the California Medical Facility in Vacaville, Calif., was sentenced by U.S. Chief District Judge Greg Kays to 42 years in federal prison without parole.

On Aug. 12, 2014, Bederson pleaded guilty to two counts of distributing child pornography. At the time he committed these offenses, Bederson was serving a 16-year state sentence in California for a charge involving the aggravated sexual abuse, sexual abuse, and abusive sexual conduct of a minor. Bederson, then a 21-year-old day care center teacher, had been arrested following an investigation into suspicions that he was molesting multiple children and possessed child pornography. According to court documents, Bederson molested at least 20 children. A civil lawsuit resulted in a judgment of more than $10 million in damages.

Bederson used smuggled cell phones to distribute numerous images and videos of child pornography while he was incarcerated. As his release date approached, Bederson began communicating with other traders of child pornography via e-mail. He amassed upwards of 40 gigabytes of images and videos in his multiple e-mail accounts, which he used to actively trade, receive, and distribute to others – including an undercover federal agent based in Kansas City, Mo. According to court documents, these images and videos constitute violent and disturbing child pornography, including minors as young as five years old.

Between Sept. 29 and Oct. 8, 2011, he sent six e-mails to an undercover agent with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), which included a total of 164 images and 10 videos of child pornography. Bederson sent this child pornography with the hope and expectation that the undercover HSI agent (and others) would reciprocate in sending child pornography back to him in return. Bederson also admitted that his e-mail accounts contained multiple gigabytes of e-mails and attachments of child pornography.

For example, on Sept. 29, 2011, Bederson sent an e-mail with 24 attached images of child pornography to the undercover federal agent. On Oct. 1, 2011, Bederson sent another e-mail to the undercover federal agent, which contained a video of child pornography.

(Missourinet) –  Emotions were high during a legislative hearing on an anti-discrimination bill. Proponents of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered people’s rights are pushing for the advancement of the Missouri Nondiscrimination Act, or MONA, in the state House. It would bar discrimination against those groups in employment, disability, or housing.

Missouri Chamber lobbyist Jay Atkins said the Chamber opposes the bill because it would create a new legally protected class. The Chamber wants reforms to employment law before that happens.

Representative Galen Higdon (R) said that the Chamber is objecting to what people do in their private lives – a statement Atkins bristled at.

“To suggest that we are here to advocate for discrimination is offensive and untrue, but we are advocating for reforms to employment law,” said Atkins.

“Well I apologize if I offended you. Unfortunately, that’s the way it came across to me,” Higdon replied.

Representative Gina Mitten (D) accused the Chamber of hijacking a bill about discrimination but not talking about their real problem with it.

“Because we don’t like the law today, we are going to make sure that other folks aren’t able to avail themselves of existing law. That in and of itself is discriminatory,” said Mitten.
Business owner, rancher and Missouri First Director Ron Calzone thinks the free market should be allowed to work as it is.

“I would support something that said government can’t discriminate based on certain things. But, let individuals decide with whom they want to associate. It’s a fundamental American right,” argued Calzone.

Even if the bill heard in a House committee Wednesday advances, the state Senate expects to deal with the issue in a different bill, if at all. Senate President Tom Dempsey (R-St. Charles) says the language would fit as an amendment to HB 1019, which the House approved earlier this year. It deals with workplace discrimination and protections for whistleblowers.

“I’d have to take a look a the specific language,” said Dempsey. “I think I said in my public comments before and I feel this way today is that as an employer I want somebody whose going to show up on time, look presentable, and take care of my customers the way I’d like them to be taken care of. Their sexuality isn’t a factor in my decision making. The same when I was a landlord. When I had some rental housing I just wanted someone who was going to take care of the property and pay their rent on time, and not engage in any illegal activity.”

In 2013 MONA passed out of the Senate as part of a larger bill, but that vote came in the final 15 minutes of the session, which then ended before the House could consider it. Dempsey and seven other Republicans voted in favor of that bill.

“If there’s a way to accommodate my concerns to where I’m more comfortable with it then I could see myself voting for it again,” said Dempsey.

Dempsey says, however, that House bill is not a priority for the Senate.

“We’ve got a Senate ‘right-to-work’ bill that members do want to see on the calendar, so that will be the, of the two bills, the bill that gets to the calendar,” said Dempsey.

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. – The Missouri Department of Conservation (MDC) reports that young turkey hunters harvested 4,441 birds during the 2015 spring youth season, April 11 and 12.

Top harvest counties were Franklin with 117 birds, Greene with 88, and Cedar with 87.

Young hunters checked 4,332 turkeys during last year’s spring youth weekend.

Hunters age 6 through 15 are allowed to take one male turkey or turkey with a visible beard during the youth season. Those who harvest a turkey during the youth season may not take a second bird until the second week of the regular spring turkey season, which runs April 20 through May 10.

 

(Missourinet) – Missouri has carried out its 3rd execution of the year. The state has executed 52-year-old Andre Cole, who was sentenced to death for the 1998 stabbing death of a friend of his ex-wife.

He received a lethal dose of pentobarbital at 10:15 p.m. in the execution chamber at the Eastern Reception, Diagnostic & Correctional Center in Bonne Terre. As the lethal injection took place, Cole turned his head towards members of his family as they blew him kisses. He then took three deep breaths and closed his eyes. His official time of death was 10:24 p.m.

The execution had been scheduled for 6 p.m. but was delayed several hours by final attempts by Cole’s attorneys to have his life spared. Governor Jay Nixon denied an appeal for clemency for Cole at 9:44 and the U.S. Supreme Court denied multiple motions for stays, allowing the execution to proceed.

After eleven years of marriage and two children, Andre Cole and his wife Terri, divorced in 1995. In August, 1998, Cole owed $3,000 in back child support to his ex-wife, when his employer began withholding money from his paycheck. Cole had reportedly told several co-workers he would kill his ex-wife before giving her any more money. Cole went to her house and broke in by throwing a car jack through a window. Court documents say Anthony Curtis was visiting Terri that night and asked Cole to leave. Cole stabbed Curtis 21 times killing him, before attacking Terri and stabbing her repeatedly, but she survived.

After the attack Cole fled the state but he returned to St. Louis 33 days later and turned himself into police. DNA analysis confirmed the presence of both victims’ blood on the knife and the presence of Cole’s blood at the scene of the crime.

Cole’s lawyers tried to appeal by offering the findings of a psychiatrist that said Cole is depressed and has symptoms of psychosis, specifically delusions that keep him from understanding why he would be executed. The Missouri Supreme Court rejected that appeal saying that he is competent, in part by reviewing audio recordings of telephone conversations in which it says Cole demonstrated that he understands his sentence and the reason for it.

There was a flurry of protests from civil rights activists and religious leaders demanding Nixon stop the execution to allow for an official review of alleged racial bias in Missouri’s jury selection process. Cole was sentenced to death by an all-white jury in the jurisdiction that covers Ferguson, the scene of last summer’s unrest over state-sanctioned racial discrimination. Three potential black jurors were removed from the jury pool during Cole’s case at the demand of St. Louis County prosecutors.

Protesters claim systemic racial bias within St. Louis County has put a vastly disproportionate number of black men on death row. The recent report from the U.S. Department of Justice found that Ferguson’s municipal police and court systems displayed signs of racial bias and operated in an illegal and unconstitutional way.

Missouri currently has 19 white men, 13 black men, and no women sentenced to death.

Missouri was scheduled to carry out the execution of Kimber Edwards in May, but the State Supreme Court has lifted its execution order without explanation. Edward’s attorneys responded on the day his execution was scheduled asking for a stay on the grounds that both have other clients with pending court proceedings that would conflict with their being able to work on his case leading up to May 12. Missouri currently does not have another execution scheduled.

UPDATE 4 p.m. – CLAYTON, Mo. (AP) — Investigators say Missouri Auditor Tom Schweich had talked for years of taking his own life but left behind no suicide note when he fatally shot himself several weeks ago.

Police in the St. Louis suburb of Clayton said Tuesday that they’re nearing the end of their investigation and have found nothing to suggest the death of the Republican candidate for governor was anything other than a suicide.

Although Schweich had been prescribed two-dozen different drugs for such things as pain relief and Crohn’s disease, toxicology tests showed there were no illegal drugs in his system.

Also Tuesday, Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon announced plans to appoint Democrat Nicole Galloway — a county treasurer — to fill the job. She would serve the remainder of Schweich’s four-year term, which began in January.

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9:25 a.m. (Missourinet) – More information will be released today about the death of Missouri Auditor Tom Schweich, according to KTVI in St. Louis.

Clayton police say Schweich fatally shot himself at his home in Clayton February 26. Sources say they will hold a media conference at 3 this afternoon to release more details from their investigation.

Schweich was said to be angry about a whispering campaign he believed was being conducted against him by leaders in the Republican party saying he was Jewish, which he believed was anti-Semitic and intended to hurt him in his race for governor.

His spokesperson at the Auditor’s office, Spence Jackson, took his own life March 29.

Missouri GOP Chairman John Hancock, who some have said was behind that whispering campaign, has denied that there was one. He said he mistakenly believed Schweich was Jewish and might have said so on some occasions, but denies it was ever to hurt Schweich politically or in relation to fundraising.